The More Things Change
by mermaidpotato
Summary: As humanity ages, it withers. Like a rose past its prime, the time spent shows. Danny, himself aging in much different ways, can't stand to just watch flowers die.
1. Retroactive

A/N: My first Danny Phantom fanfic. Not the first I've written, but the first I've posted. Depressing; you have been warned.

This is just the first chapter; I've written the next one as well, and the last. They won't be posted today, and how quickly I'll fill in the rest (my life is poised to eat me alive) is heavily dependant on the interest level. This is just a warning, though; it doesn't get much happier. If you're looking for some fluff, let me know, because I've got some of that in the backlog, too. I have a ton of stuff written, you guys just have to let me know what you want to see so I can get it up.

Disclaimer: Danny Phantom is not mine. It was written and (I think) drawn by the lovely Butch Hartman, and he's copyrighted by Nickelodean. I simply own the plot and these particular inflections of the characters.

* * *

It didn't work out quite like they had imagined. For most couples, it was "'til death do us part." They had never quite managed to put into words exactly what they had. First of all, the livelihood of one party member was in question, and there were a thousand more oddities on top of that. Once they finally managed to admit it openly, the life-or-death didn't stop. If anything, it got worse. They could never really promise anything because they never had any definites.

It was as good as a miracle when they both managed to make it through college-bodies and relationship in-tact. But, soon after, it became obvious that their luck was running low. Once up on a time, Danny had entertained (dreamed about) notions of growing old with her, settling down and raising quarter-ghost kids… or something like that. But time, in its usual manner, dashed the dreams to dust. Sam grew older. Danny hit twenty… and stopped. While he was still battling ghosts toe-to-toe practically as a part-time job, Sam eventually grew tired of the hoopla. It took her a while, spirited as she was, but with age, even she admitted to being "too old for this."

What had grown into a beautiful partnership devolved first back to a superhero and his sidekick. Once it hit that mark, they were doomed. Sam would never take anything less than equality, and there came a time when Danny couldn't give it. It was the world or Sam, and, as he always did in the end, he took up the mantle of the hero.

He tried to be around for her as a friend, unable to bear breaking that last promise he'd made, until his parents died. They were both in their seventies, a perfectly reasonable age to die, but of course they couldn't manage to die in peace. His dad wasn't in the best of health, but his mom was the picture of fitness. Of course it had to be ghost-related. And of course he had to have been there, unable to stop it. If it had been just one, or if they'd both been taken by something slightly more natural-a human with a gun, even, over a raging suddenly-single Skulker with his buddy Technus-then maybe he could've dealt with it. But, of course, he was not just Danny Phantom, but Danny Fenton. His luck was worse than Johnny 13's. So Skulker and Technus had slipped through the portal on one of his trips home, and it had gotten a bit out-of-hand.

Unable to cope with their loss and suddenly all too aware of the mortality of humans on top of their tendency to live, he ran. Danny Fenton was not eradicated-he knew the danger of that and feared the consequences more than he feared the loss of any one thing-but shoved to the side. To the world, Danny Fenton ceased to exist and Danny Phantom became less of a public hero and more of a legendary specter. Glimpses of him were rare-rarer still by those who had once known him-as he preferred if he could head things off in the Ghost Zone before they got out of hand.

On the plus side, Danny Phantom managed to hold onto his sanity better than the first possibility of his future had. His hero complex remained, and he managed to whip the Ghost Zone into much better shape than Walker had ever been able to. In fact, eventually, he got the obnoxious, rule-obsessed ghost off his back for good. The fact that the warden couldn't actually imprison him for long helped.

On the down side, there were a good dozen not-so-great aspects, and that was only counting the obvious. Danny, as much as he had been the outcast for his high school years, was not a hermit. And, due to the obsessive tendencies of his ghost half, he had a hard time staying away from Sam. In the meantime, he threw all of his obsessive energy into being a hero-not just to the humans this time, but ghosts as well-and hated himself for thinking that it would be easier when Sam was no longer in the picture. After the worst of his temptations was gone, perhaps he could haunt her grave in peace. He only let himself think about that half of the equation when he withdrew to his lair, seeking out sleep and unable to find it for a long while. Sometimes it helped to return to his more-easily-exhausted human form, but most nights nothing would help. Nothing short of going back would help, and that was just a different form of torture.

Stuck in an eternal limbo, all he could do was seek out distractions while he waited. The former he did with gusto, unwilling to stay still for longer than sleep required. While he did know, on some level, that he was waiting, it wasn't until he saw a familiar flash of red, at once too bright and too dull, that he realized just what he was waiting for.


	2. Fear of Change

A/N: Since it's the week of exams, the only stuff I'm gonna have the time to put up is what I've already completely written and edited. Afterwards, I'll start writing new chapters for this (and, for anyone who reads both, Anonymous) again, and we'll be back to our regularly scheduled program... or whatever.

I'm actually really proud of this chapter... despite its shortness. It was written out on paper, and that tends to be a common thread in what I actually physically write; good, but not nearly as long as I thought it was. Well... that, and I really, really wanted to end on this line. So the entire conversation is kinda written around it. Anyways, I hope you enjoy until I get around to writing the next chapter. I promise it'll be longer, and hopefuly just as good.

* * *

"Tucker?" The word came, unbidden, out of his mouth before he could stop it.

Of course he heard. Of course he turned around. Of course Danny was too shocked to contemplate flying off. That was just Danny's luck.

"Danny?" Tucker asked, squinting through his glasses. For a moment, they were both frozen. Before either of them really had a chance to process the swirling thoughts and emotions running rampant through their heads, Tucker raised his arm and tapped a few keystrokes on the gauntlet-like mechanism strapped across his wrist. Before Danny could think to move in one direction or the other, Tucker was somehow floating towards him. There was a moment of instinctive panic before his eyes caught on the gleam of a jetpack and a spark of anger took over.

"Tucker, what are you doing here? You're, what, in your eighties? The Ghost Zone is dangerous; you can't just go traipsing around anymore."

His once-upon-a-time best friend made a face somewhere between a grimace and a sneer. "Only seventy-six, actually. Luckily, I've been too busy to get old."

Danny wasn't sure if it was a jab at him or not, but he wasn't amused either way. While a lot of things in the Ghost Zone had gotten better, it could be worse in some parts. It was no place for an aging man, even one with as much gear and smooth-talking ability as Tucker.

"You'd better have a good reason for coming here" Danny, still floating, crossed his arms.

Tucker was straining to keep the sarcastic good humor on his face. "What, not glad to see me?" The glare that the possibly-now-more-than-halfa leveled him with was the death of his sardonic smirk. His expression grew just as grave as Danny's, and for a moment both men looked their age. Not literally, of course-the ghost frozen in time and the human who used every tool in his wide arsenal to fight against it-but seventy-six years of hardship sparkled behind each set of eyes.

"I'd say I'm just not the one you want to see, but I don't think there's anyone you want to see anymore." Tucker sighed, and, as predicted, Danny neither confirmed nor denied his statement. He wasn't sure his friend knew anymore why he was hiding.

"Well, hurry up. Let's get this over with."

The somber moment over, Tucker shoved away his pity for his friend. He hadn't come just to be a ghost of the past. And, he grimaced to himself, he'd be lying if he dais the pun wasn't intended. "I'm here to tell you something. I know you don't want to hear it, but I think you _need_ to."

Despite the authority to his words, there was a definite question to his voice. Struggling for a moment, Danny eventually answered with a terse "fine."

Tucker took a deep breath, not sure where to start. A gap of more than thirty years lay between them. Readying the elephant gun, he took his first shot. "Sam hates you."

It wasn't where he'd meant to start, but it would do. If the flicker of expression on Danny's face meant anything at all, then it was already going better than expected. Tucker let it sink in for a moment, attempting to stay away from the pity danger zone as he watched his friend's expression close off.

"So?"

Tucker raised an eyebrow, easily seeing through the façade. "She's dated other guys. Even got engaged once."

And… there. Danny's already green eyes surged with energy and rage, and his fists clenched forcefully at his sides. "And?" His voice had a cold edge to it that Tucker had heard only a handful of times before. As a teenager, he would have shied away from the bone-chilling power. Now, however, he stood tall. He hadn't been the cowardly, wimpy sidekick for decades.

Danny nearly growled when Tucker refused to even do so much as flinch. "Ahy are you telling me this now?" He snapped, his entire form shaking, head-to-toe. "Too little, too late."

"Because," Tucker replied, looking his friend straight in the eyes, "she never really moved on."

Danny, his eyes now closed and his face twisted up in some strange attempt to keep the anger in, sounded surprisingly hollow when he spoke. As if the last bit of life inside him had been shattered. "What do you want me to do about it, Tuck? It's not like I can just whisk back and pick up where we left off. She's almost in her eighties and I still look straight out of college! Until you came to talk to me, I wasn't even sure if she was alive."

Tucker took an uneasy breath, looking away. Now he understood why he hadn't started with it. This was the hard part. "Yeah, about that…" he trailed off, having to haul his mind back on track. "That's kinda what I wanted to tell you. She's dying."


	3. Rate of Change

A/N: I keep telling myself these chapters will get longer, but they're not. Ah, well. At least I'm happy with them.

I promise, I really do, that things will actually start to happen in the next chapter. The introspection is clinging to me like wet cotton. Hopefully this will be the last chapter for a while that's so heavily thought-based. I suppose that's my excuse for the shortness. On the same note, there's not much else I could've said. Anyways, hope you enjoy it. :/

* * *

He floated idly in front of the portal. While the house itself was withering with age, Jazz growing too weary and too busy to look after the mad old building that wasn't really her home anymore, Danny had seen to it himself that the ghost portal was perfectly maintained.

Half of the gadgets in the lab had been disassembled in an attempt to keep some semblance of safety, the remains now strewn about the floor and tables. Most of the others found themselves in an eternal state of false completion, wired in with some other half-finished device years before to make a half-baked idea work on the fly. Rust was finally starting to eat away at the various do-dads, leaving most of the metal too battered even for scrap and a good deal of the once-working gadgets in a state too dubious to mess with. All of the refrigerators, thankfully, had been emptied of food ages ago, even emergency hams, and when the house was cleaned, it was done vigorously, so the only thing it smelled of was age and ectoplasm. Hardly a trace of humanity still remained in the entire abode.

The walls of the lab, however, were a contrast to the mess, in spotlessly working order. To anyone else, it would've been eerie and unnatural. Certainly, it was, to see dilapidation framed by efficiency and cleanliness. But to Danny, the distorted picture he could see through the portal had a strange sort of poetry to it. Usually, he didn't feel introspective enough to stare at it, but it really was ironic. Time had given him an appreciation for that, at the least.

Still perturbed by Tucker's sudden appearance, and even so more by the note he had ended on, he was not here to clean and maintain, for once. He could, undoubtedly; the house was always in need of it anymore, but he had flown over in a sort of stupor before parking himself in front of the surreal scene, and he didn't trust his hands or his mind to concentrate on such delicate work.

Danny clenched his entire body in anticipation before he slowly unfurled the tight fist he'd made with his right hand. Staring stupidly at the crumpled paper residing there, his eyes traveled over what words he could see around the creases before slowly wandering up to the real world. His old home. The human world. Whatever it was.

He just hovered there for a long while, time indefinite. As it was, he'd lost just about any real perception of its passing, and when he really drew within himself, it was even harder to tell.

Tucker's words didn't make any difference. They shouldn't. He'd known Sam was dying, all along. She was human; mortal. They died. It was just what they did, and he'd gotten used to it. What difference did it make to him exactly when? Regardless of whether she had hours or days left, it was nothing compared to the apparent infinity he had stretching before him that he couldn't share with her. That wasn't changing, so it didn't matter... But he knew that was a lie. From the logical frigidity afforded him as a ghost, it might not matter. But the little inkling of humanity he still had left knew that it did.

Unwilling to go but unable to stop it, he finally flattened the paper out enough to read it one last time before returning it to its previous state and zooming away.

-S-P-A-C-E-A-N-D-T-I-M-E-G-A-P-

Tucker hesitated at the door, worrying his beret between his hands as he tried to conjure up some magic words; something he could say to Sam that would make everything better. He knew there weren't any, but he racked his brain for them regardless. He should've known better, but the latest news had shoved him over the edge. He knew he should be happy that she managed to live to such an old age, but that was just it. She'd never really let herself live.

He'd tried one last time, and now it was out of his hands. Sam would know, though. Sam would take one look at him and know; she'd always been able to. So he stood, nervously trying to find something to say. Something that, if he couldn't make it better, at least wouldn't make it worse. Something to cushion the fall. At this point, anything.

At long last and far too soon, the doctor walked out through the door and nodded at Tucker. Gulping and nodding back, he stepped through the door.

Sam, once so strong and independent, was now propped up on a mountain of pillows so that she could look properly around the room. Her gaze caught Tucker's unwaveringly, betraying her apparent weakness. "So?"

The one word gave him plenty of space to backtrack, to cushion, to ignore or sidestep or hint around. But, under pressure, there was only one thing he could think to say. Honestly, Sam wouldn't have wanted anything less. "He's not coming."


	4. The Startling Kind

A/N: Yay! Longest chapter so far! But... still not a whole lot of dialogue. Ah well. This story seems doomed to be heavily introspective. I suppose good angst requires brooding. One way or another, this is continuing to be the easiest thing to write that I've tackled in a while, so I'm not going to try to mess with it.

* * *

Tucker held her hand, gazing down at her much more tenderly than Danny ever could have imagined, and certainly much more than he remembered. He'd have to be blind to call it anything but love, but he'd have to be a jealous fool to say it was romantic.

Despite the years-decades, even-apart, he still knew Tucker. Sam was too much the opposition to everything he was to be anything but a bickering best friend. Besides, Tucker had been straightforward yesterday, and there was no other word for it. He'd been nervous, but not fidgeting like a liar. If the two had found happiness together without him, Tucker wouldn't have risked his hide in the ghost zone trying to find him.

And yet, despite the fact that he should've known better on principle, Danny was a coward. A jealous, idiotic coward who didn't deserve Sam and, instead of facing up to things like he should, hovered invisibly in the corner of the room and spun fantasies that could never be true.

"So, I was thinking… I know you don't need it anymore, but it's not like I have anything else to use it for… after I funnel most of my millions into charity, you think you could use a few of the ones left over?" Sam smiled up at Tucker, only a little tired, and despite her physical condition, her voice was strong as ever.

Tucker, his eyes already shining with tears he was trying to hide, tensed for a moment as he held in a sob. "You're just offering me a million dollars like that?"

"I was thinking closer to five or six… I mean, maybe ten or so if you'll take 'em, but… if one's all you're comfortable with…" She trailed off, a hint of her old smirk on her face.

Tucker's hand tightened around hers as he tried to smile back. "Sam… what in the world am I going to do with ten million dollars?"

"I don't know," Sam hedged, making an awkward effort to shrug laterally, "And, honestly, I don't care. So long as you don't spend it on anything meat-related or cruel to the environment and you don't blow it all on something stupid, it doesn't make any difference to me. But the guy's coming tomorrow to finalize my will, so I want to pin down all the exact numbers. How much are you comfortable with?"

"Sam, you know I don't need a million dollars. I'm seventy-six and there's not much left for me to…"

"I know you don't _need_ it," Sam cut in, "no one _needs_ a million dollars. This is about the fact that I've always been stingy with my money except where charity is concerned, and that you're _worth_ a million dollars. You're worth more than what I've got to give. You've stood by me all these years, and you're the only friend I really have who means that much to me."

The unspoken implications rang heavily in the air, almost as if she knew Danny was silently there. But she didn't, and it only made Danny realize that they'd gotten used to his absence. It had become something they spit upon offhandedly. She certainly didn't seem like she'd 'never gotten over him'. In fact, for someone who was sixty-seven and essentially trapped in their deathbed-though he wondered whether she actually couldn't get up or if she'd just given up arguing with the doctors-she was looking great. Smiling, strong voice, shining eyes… oh, he could get lost in those eyes.

Snatching his sanity back when she blinked, he tore his attention away and turned, suppressing a sigh as he flew straight through the ceiling. He reappeared in an alley, massaging his eyes with the heels of his hands once his feet reacquainted themselves with the floor. There was a hole in the room, wanting to be filled even after all these years. The hole he had so carelessly left and expected to heal. It had certainly started to scab back over, but it was still there, missing. He didn't deserve to slip back in, and all indicators pointed to the fact that Sam didn't want him to. But… Tucker had always had a way of knowing them both better than they knew themselves. He wasn't senile; not Tuck. And if he thought it was still worth a shot, maybe he could bring himself to walk into the room and see what happened. He'd faced down the undead embodiments of nightmares and legends, even the self that he could've become. Surely he could handle one dying best friend… ex-best friend. If Tucker was so sure it was for the best, maybe he could make the sacrifice.

Danny didn't deserve one last chance, but just maybe Sam did.

-S-P-A-C-E-A-N-D-T-I-M-E-G-A-P-

Sam's eyes were closed on the bed, but she was awake. Peaceful, tired, and extremely contemplative, but still awake behind lidded eyes. It had been a long day, but all of her days lately had been long. She should probably be grateful that the last of her life was being stretched out so much. Perhaps it wasn't the part she wanted to remember most looking back, but she'd take what she could get.

It was a testament to her deep-engrained stubbornness that she kept to a fairly normal sleeping schedule. As much as it irritated the doctors, it made things more convenient for the visitors and, in a way, herself. It kept of the constant charade of being all together that she needed now more than ever.

Really, it wasn't much of an effort. In a way, it was who she had become. Who she had always been and who she still wanted to be. For all intents and purposes, she was still her, but in moments like this, when the long, dragging days seemed to hold their breath and she was alone with her thoughts while Tucker grabbed lunch, she thought that maybe it would be nice to be able to be afraid. Fear, of course, wasn't a very goth-like emotion, but who was she to stick to stereotypes?

A knock on the door drew her out of her thoughts. Feeling the smile spread back across her face and her usual strength snap into place, she began to pull herself into a propped up sitting position again. "Tuck, you know you don't need to knock. I know I used to chide you about manners and all that, but you're allowed to see your friend. You, of all people-"

The door opened hesitantly, and that was when she knew something was wrong. Tucker had a tendency to, even in his old age, swing a door wide open and walk into a room babbling all sorts of nonsense. He brightened it when he walked in. For all his faults, she could say that. He was an persistently optimistic person. It took a lot to make him hesitate.

"Tucker?" she asked hesitantly, now fearing for the general well-being of the country as well as her own. "What's wrong?"

She heard a deep breath being taken outside the door, the kind that one squared their shoulders during, and then the door swung open with a slow creak. "Uh… hey, Sam."

Okay, now she was definitely afraid for her own well-being. She was starting to hallucinate. What she saw was a scene straight out of her memories. Not ten feet away from her stood a twenty-five year-old Danny Fenton, fidgeting nervously as he played with the back of his neck.

"Danny?" She whispered, incredulous.

He gave a sheepish smile and managed a finger-wiggle sort of wave.

Once she wrapped her head fully around the concept, she sat bolt upright in her bed, which was no small feat, and pointed an accusing finger straight at him. The heart monitor, which had been essentially muted in the corner, now screeched wildly at the unexpected jump. Despite the wrinkles adorning her pale, aged face, she managed to level the room's only other occupant with a searing glare. "Daniel Fenton, what in Nocturne's name makes you think you have the right to just show up after twenty years?"

* * *

A/N: Sorry, I didn't want to spoil this at the beginning, but I feel that it's important. Hope you enjoyed the chapter.

I'm finally where I've wanted to be for about three chapters now (next chapter, once I write it, will be the one I've been looking forward to), and yet I have a bit of a pickle. I don't know if I want Tucker to know that Danny's visited yet, but I don't know if I can avoid it. So I'm doing something I don't often do and asking for opinions. Just review and tell me what you think, but sooner rather than later would be best because I'm done with exams at long last (hoorah!) and feeling well enough to burn off the writing mood I've been in.

Tell me; should Tucker come back from lunch while Danny is still in the room, or should we keep this little visit between our lovebirds? (Don't let that get your hopes up; it's just a nickname. ;) )

Okay. For anyone who sees this, for whatever reason, I did change the ages of the gang from 82 to 76 for the sake of making the timeline make sense. It's now been a little over twenty years instead of a little over thirty. I've done the math... and redone it. Repeatedly. Finally, I've got a timeline that I'm satisfied with. Hoorah. I'll be making another note whenever I get the next chapter up, but I'm changing it here first.


	5. Direct Influence

A/N: I don't know why this chapter was so hard to write... I think it came out pretty well, though. I feel like something's off, but I can't put my finger on it. That's the problem with stories that are posted chapter at a time, I suppose... my problem with them, at least. Maybe I need to start taking a little more time between chapters, I don't know. I feel like a lot of what I'm putting up is still pretty raw, but I'm kinda funny about editing, so I don't know if it would help. But I digress.

This is the chapter that everyone has probably been waiting for, and the one that I wanted to be at in chapter 3. Don't know why it took me so long, other than the fact that I can't ever seem to control the length of what I write. Anyways, I hope it doesn't disappoint.

Also, much more exciting to me but probably absolutely insignificant to the rest of you, I now have a sort of outline for this story. Written down. Which is incredible, for me. But I think it should help keep things vaguely on track. On a last note, almost completely insignificant to the story, I have reworked the math a couple dozen times and finally decided to give in and change their ages to 76. I feel like it works just as well, and it doesn't make any significant difference to the story, but it now means that I have a timeline without a magic hole in the middle. So it matters to me. I've gone back and edited it into previous chapters, but you don't need to re-read them because of it or anything. It makes no real difference. Just know now, so that you're not confused. This also means that it's only been a little over twenty years since the death of Danny's parents and the beginning of our story, instead of a little over thirty. I'm satisfied with that.

Sorry for keeping you, and I appreciate it if you actually take the time to read these things. Enjoy the story now, please.

* * *

The usually calm room was rushed by two doctors and a nurse mere seconds after Sam's accusation. Shoving Danny aside in their hurry to get through the door, the tallest doctor immediately began to ask questions.

"Are you alright? Ms. Manson, do you feel okay? Can you breathe? Move? Talk? Any pains or discomfort?" He cut himself off before the barrage really got started, giving Sam a chance to answer. The much shorter blond doctor and the nurse had busied themselves by the vitals screen, checking to see if it spread beyond her heart rate.

With a deep breath that became a sigh, Sam flopped back down on the combination bed-pillow mountain. "I've told you before, Charlie, it's Sam. I don't care how old I am, I'm not a teacher and I refuse to be called Ms. Manson by anyone over the age of twelve." Taking a moment to stop her own tangent, she took a few more breaths, not quite as deep or as sigh-like, mostly serving to calm her heart rate back down. "And I'm fine. The only thing wrong with me are these bedsores starting to form since you lot won't let me out of bed."

Charlie sighed, motioning to his entourage that he had it under control. With one last skeptical glance over the monitors, they left the room. It was widely known that Sam was a tenacious patient. "Sam, Mr. Foley just took you for a walk yesterday."

Sam flashed him a wicked grin that made her face look years younger. "I know. Just never hurts to remind you. Took you long enough to even let me have that."

Shaking his head, Dr. Charlie let a small smile slip onto his own face. "Really, though. What happened that made the heart monitor spike like that?"

"Oh..." Sam's easy grin fell off of her face, and a growing unease took over, though she tried to hide it. The doctors all worried enough about her without her giving them reason to. "I just... got a little excited, is all. Someone showed up that I haven't seen in a while." Her head tilted to indicate Danny, and the doctor noticed him standing awkwardly in the corner for the first time.

"Oh, hello there." Dr. Charlie gave the young man a firm nod of his head and he got a sheepish wave in return. Turning somewhat suspiciously back to his stubborn patient, he asked "Who's this? Family?" He had always wondered why she never got any visits from family, so the possibility intrigued him more than a little. It would certainly explain why she'd been so surprised, if one had finally decided to show up.

Getting an extremely wistful look on her face in one of those rare moments that it was actually believable she'd lived a long, long life, she eventually answered, "A friend. An old friend of the family. His parents were good friends of mine, but they died years ago. I haven't seen him in ages."

The doctor nodded sympathetically. "That's too bad. Adopted off or something, then?"

Going quiet again, Sam swallowed and eventually nodded. "I almost didn't expect him to remember me. I don't know how he knew to find me, but I was just about to find that out." She gave the boy a pointed glance, and the doctor recognized his cue to be out.

With a last set of congenial goodbyes and a warning not to excite 'Ms. Samantha' too much more, which Sam allowed with a grumble, he was off.

An awkward silence swathed the room. Since Sam's heart rate had returned to normal, even the heart monitor had muted itself, leaving the pair utterly alone with a chasm between them and hundreds of questions to be thrown across it. Neither was sure if they could throw that far, but after an eternity, Danny tried anyways.

"You just let him get away with Samantha? I'd have thought you were more used to Ms. Manson." He attempted to lighten the atmosphere, but Sam was having none of it. He couldn't blame her.

"Maybe I go by Samantha now, have you considered that? What would you say then?" Her voice was cold and angry, with the shake in it that would mean she were on the verge of tears if she were anyone else. Danny laughed shakily anyways, not seeming to care.

"I would say that I must have the wrong room... and it's a shame, because you look beautiful." He gave her a hesitant smile, and she turned her head away, staring absently miles beyond the rhythmic heart monitor.

"Drop it, Danny. You've been gone twenty-four years. You've got no right. For all you know, I'm not even remotely your Sam anymore. I could've grown up while you were gone, not that you would know anything about that. I could've changed." Her voice was now eerily calm, even to Danny, and he recognized the tone from himself. She didn't seem like she was completely there with him, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to know where her mind really was. "Twenty-four years, Danny. Do you know how long twenty-four years is to someone who's not going to live past eighty? And you've never been back once in all that time. Not once. So cut to the chase; why are you here?" Finally, her head lolled around to look at him. "What in the universe could you possibly want, Danny Fenton, that would bring you back here?"

Danny let out his own sigh, finally dropping any pretense of being a genial twenty-five year old. His face aged instantly the moment the effort at good nature slid from his face, and it nearly shocked Sam into speech. But he didn't give her the chance. "I'm sorry. I know that I don't... I don't know what I was thinking. I just... didn't think you heard it enough anymore."

Sam's entire arsenal of retorts were lost, and all that made it out of her mouth was "What?"

Danny coughed awkwardly and clarified, running a hand through his hair. "I... sorry I sounded like I was trying to schmooze you. I'm not here to try and pick up where we left off or anything like that. Wrong impression, just... old habits die hard."

"Why are you here, then?" Sam deadpanned.

Taking a deep breath and letting it out in a rush, he thought for a minute. "Well... right now, I'm here because I thought you deserved an apology, at the least. Tucker... made me realize just how much of a jerk I've been, and... yeah. Guess I finally lost my nerve."

Amethyst eyes trained onto him, probing, and they were shocked when the icy blue objects of her search held her gaze. "What are you doing, Danny? I'm tired of you playing with my emotions. I'm sick of it."

"I don't know, Sam." After another moment of thought, he glanced away, Sam continuing to bore into the side of his head with her gaze. "I wasn't thinking, and then I tried to do what I thought was best, and for the longest time I was just trying to hold it all together... now I guess I'm tired of all my own crap, too."

"You do realize that one visit; one measly little apology isn't going to make up for nearly twenty-five years of ignoring me. Of running from me and dashing all my dreams to pieces."

"I should hope not," Danny said, glancing back earnestly with a touch of surprise. "I don't know if I would've come back, if I knew you were going to forgive me."

Sam could almost feel tears of frustration welling up, but she refused to let them through and instead settled for clenching her fists and breathing as evenly as she could. No need to alarm the doctors a second time in a day. "And what the hell is that supposed to mean?" She ground out.

"I said I was here to apologize, I never said I wanted to be forgiven. What kind of idiot just leaves his... best friend like that?" The awkward stumble led to a slightly awkward pause, examining the ceiling for a while as Sam mulled his words over. "I really am sorry," he announced after a while, offhandedly.

"Why, then?" Sam demanded after a while, frustrated with trying to understand the answers she was being given, "If you were such an idiot, if you're apologizing now but you don't want forgiveness, if you were stuck in some kind of funk for years, refusing to come back because you were too stubborn, why? Why?"

After a moment of consideration, looking into Sam's eyes the way she'd been looking at his earlier, he returned a question of his own. "Why what?"

"Why any of this?"

Another moment of consideration, not quite as long, and then he shook his head. "If I start, I'll just be making excuses. Can't we just say what's done is done for the moment, no matter how horrible?" Sam was about to protest, but saw something deeper flash in his eyes. Reluctantly, she let it go. For now.

There was a long pause until she heard a distant whistling sound from the direction of the hallway. Sighing partially in frustration and partially in relief, she spoke. "That's Tucker coming."

"How do you know?" Danny asked, just glad to be on a different topic.

"He's the only one irritatingly optimistic enough to whistle in the extended care wing of the hospital." Sam pretended to grimace, but it was surprisingly playful. "Anyways," she added, the momentary friendliness dying down, "I don't really think I want him to know you visited. So... if you could leave?"

Danny nodded, already starting to float off the ground. "Goodbye, Sam. Take care of yourself."

"Just get out of here."

With a last glance over his shoulder, Danny turned intangible and then he was flying through the roof for the second time that day, not that anyone else knew that.

Once he was gone, the room was immediately a few degrees warmer, but Sam was left with a lingering chill she couldn't explain. Not much later, Tucker cheerfully burst through the door, cutting himself off mid-whistle. "Hey, Sammy! Miss me?"

"Yeah," Sam replied slowly, tearing hear gaze away from the ceiling, "I'd miss you more if you didn't call me Sammy."

"Oh, lighten up. A person gets bored of saying 'Sam' all the time. Is there nothing else I can call you?"

"You want to give me a pet name," Sam replied, seemingly returning to herself but still wondering over the surprise visit in the back of her mind, "buy me a drink first."

Tucker laughed, either not noticing or ignoring that she was feeling off. Most likely the latter, with how well he knew her. "Somehow, I don't think the doctors would approve of that."

"What do they approve of?" she asked offhandedly. Somewhere in the still-conscious recesses of her mind, she was trying to sort out her feelings, and somewhere even deeper, the niggling question rang out of whether or not he'd be back. That and others proceeded to plague her quietly for the rest of the day.

It wasn't until late that night, the lights dark and sleep refusing to come, that she realized it was probably the first time in nearly twenty years anyone had called her beautiful. She hated him for that.


	6. Same Difference

A/N: And this chapter is me completely blowing any expectations I had for actually continuing the story... again. Filler... bordering on fluff. In fact, I think it somehow managed to cross the line. But I think it's okay. It's... kinda important. In an unimportant way. *sigh*

I really like the dynamics laid down, though. If not the fact that I actually wasted an entire chapter here. Next one is back on track, I promise. I was _extremely_ tempted to write the story behind the little snippet at the end, as I have one in mind, but I think it looses it's effect that way. And it would be way too long besides. I might possibly write it as a seperate oneshot for it, but I kinda like to leave people guessing. I'd love to hear your version of the story. ;)

Anyways, enjoy. We will be back to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow. Oh, and I'm upping the rating to T because I can't seem to stop mentioning alcohol and I'm paranoid like that.

* * *

His lair. He wasn't sure why he'd been drawn to this place over any other, but what was once a hunk of rock had become _his_ hunk of rock. Unlike Ember's lair, where music was always blasting and every inch of wall space was filled with something music-related, or Aragon's, which was a massive medieval castle that had been, at one point, removed from time, or even the Box Ghost's, crowded with all manner and size of empty boxes, his was still practically empty. A small hovel-like cave structure with a fairly flat rock outcropping in front, almost like a yard, that floated aimlessly in what felt some days like the only part of the ghost zone not polluted by suspended doors.

Inside, a bed had made its appearance, and a scene akin to the night sky could always be seen splayed across his ceiling. Various bits of mostly-outdated ghost weaponry were piled in the corner, next to the fridge that never ran out of food. A few chairs and a table sat in the middle out of necessity (the small lair had been the birthplace of many a peace treaty), but other than the familiar blue bed and the starry ceiling, it could have belonged to anyone. Without the bed, he probably wouldn't even have claimed it as his own.

With the workings of lairs, it could have been a massive hangout, his bigger-on-the-inside dream house. But he'd never gotten comfortable in the ghost zone. He didn't _want_ to belong there. The 'lair magic', as it was usually called, worked for him, hence the existing furniture and the always-full fridge, but he was only so okay with it.

The only thing that truly, truly marked it as his was the air. To any ghost (or half-ghost) with half a sense, the atmosphere itself was perceptibly full of Danny Phantom's energy. It was his lair, and that was enough for him to sleep there. Or, at this moment in time, float about near the ceiling in an imitation of pacing as he fretted over what to do next.

"Whoa... Phantom, you actually in here?" Ember's familiar voice drifted into his hovel from the door, tinged with. "What's up? Couldn't sleep?"

"Something like that," the halfa replied, halting midair and dragging his hands across his face. He turned to face Ember and floated a little closer to the floor. "What about you? Fighting with that scrap metal boyfriend of yours again?" His eyes narrowed at the thought of Skulker; even after all these years, he still carried an almost irrational grudge against the battle suit-laden ghost.

"Naw," Ember shook her head, leaning against the equivalent to a door frame. Hovering about a foot off the ground, her arms were crossed over her chest, and her guitar was, as usual, strung across her back. "Not yet, at least. We'll see about tomorrow," she rolled her eyes with an expectant sigh. "It's my deathday party tomorrow, and you know how bad he is with dates. That's what I wanted to tell you, actually. Keep a lookout for Desiree and all; I know you never managed to get on good terms with her. Figured I'd remind you, since you're even worse with dates than my beau."

"Thanks," Danny said with a half-smile, ruffling his hair a little. "But I still don't see how you can keep track of what day it is when there's no sun or moon or even stars."

Ember laughed, shaking her head in a motion that also flipped her ponytail over her shoulder. "It's the human in you. It'd probably help if you actually slept like you're supposed to. Or, I don't know, got a watch. Maybe spring for a calendar."

"Ember Mclain, mother hen." Danny joked, and there was a rare moment of easy laughter between the pair. The laughter lasted a few short seconds, but the pause lasted much longer. It was a strange night (for, at the moment, though Danny didn't know it, it was indeed a few minutes past ghostly midnight), and both were content to just wait around for a minute. The ghost zone was a place where eternity was a more valid concept than gravity, so lingering was a commonplace practice. Even with immediate deadlines looming, it was just hard to work up any sort of rush. "So... deathday party, huh?" Danny asked at last, still hovering randomly in the middle of his lair.

"Yeah; it's gonna be great. Half the ghost zone's gonna be there—the less annoying half, that is—and I've actually got a DJ this year so I don't have to spend half the party playing my own music. There's plenty of room for it all to go wrong, and don't expect any small amount of chaos from me if it does, but things are looking good for now. No use spending all night worrying."

"Hmm... sounds fun," Danny offered, finally fed up with floating awkwardly in the middle of his makeshift home and floating over to the fridge. "Johnny and his Shadow invited?"

"No way," Ember's eyes went wide and she shuddered, "not after last year." She practically spat as she referred to the incident. Danny hadn't been there, but he'd had to help with the cleanup. It hadn't been pretty.

"Then things shouldn't be too bad." In reality, there was no chance whatsoever that the day would be without hitch, considering the lot that was invited, but so long as the worst had been weeded out, he was reasonably confident that it would be much better than last year.

Opening the door to the fridge and perusing for a minute before grabbing a soda, he called back at Ember, "Want one? So long as you're here?" and brandished the can over his shoulder.

"Sure," Ember said, moving away from her spot and slinging the guitar off of her back to rest it against the wall. "Thanks, Phantom. You're... in a strange mood tonight." She plopped down in one of the rarely-used couches and hummed appreciatively as she sunk down into it. "I don't know why you never hang around here; it's still a mystery to me how your lair manages to make the couches so much comfier than mine."

Danny handed her his soda and sat down in the similarly comfy recliner. "I just happen to like my furniture overstuffed. It's a human thing. And I'm always extra-nice when I want something." He popped his can open, savoring the hiss it made before taking a huge swallow.

"Uh-oh, here's the part where my big day gets ruined before it even starts." Ember quipped sarcastically, rolling her eyes as she took a swig of her own drink. "What do you want this time?"

"Think I could crash the party tomorrow?" He asked casually over the rim of his can.

Ember raised an eyebrow, surprised, and lowered her soda. "You ever drink ghost booze?"

"Once," Danny replied with a cringe, lowering his own can at the memory, "I'd say I'm not likely to forget, but I'm afraid I already have. Don't worry, I'll stay away from suspicious liquids."

Ember shrugged it off, then proceeded to swirl her can around just to feel the weight move. "Can you and Skulk-baby play nice?"

"Doubt it."

"He's not that bad, you know," Ember said, staring contemplatively at her soda. "Just... a lot of bark."

"You're not the one that's been bitten," Danny corrected with a cringe, a shiver traveling down his body.

Laughing, his guest finished off the rest of her soda before she raised an eyebrow. "I wouldn't be so sure about that if I were you."

"Eugh!" Danny protested after he swallowed his own gulp, immediately crossing his arms over his face as if protecting himself from the thought. "Yuck! Never mind! I don't want to know. Please, please don't tell me!"

Ember laughed, crushing the can in her hand and then watching as it sizzled seemingly into nothingness. "So you really want to come to my deathday party tomorrow? The great, high-and-almighty Danny Phantom wants to come to a party in the honor of a lowly rock star?"

"Why not? Puts me right where the action's likely to be, and besides, it sounds fun."

"Okay," Ember said, shifting to get a clearer view of Phantom, "What happened?"

"I suppose... Got a little sense shocked into me. I've just finally been snapped out of it." Nostalgic, he went to take another sip of his soda, and found that he'd drank it all already. Instead of crushing it like he normally would've, he just set the empty can down on the coffee table.

"It?"

He took a deep breath, kicking the recliner back and putting his arms behind his head. "Yeah. Don't know if you noticed, but I've been in a bit of a funk for a while."

Ember's barking laugh startled him out of his comfort, and he furrowed his brow at her. "Noticed it? Danny, I'm the only one who still comes to your place of my own free will."

"Yeah, why is that, by the way?" Danny asked, settling his head back into his arms again.

"I don't know," Ember said contemplatively, "I did always like to mess with you. That, and I was one of the first ones to make my peace with you. Guess, somewhere along the line, you made a friend. Go figure."

"Some friend, not even inviting me to your deathday." Danny scoffed, faking offense.

"Hey, you asked if you could crash. Now you want an invitation?"

"Well, I didn't know I was a _friend_ earlier. I feel like I'm entitled to certain rights."

Ember rolled her eyes, floating up from the couch and over to retrieve her guitar. "Ugh, I shouldn't have said that. Now it's just gonna go to your head." After she slung her prized possession back over her back, she turned to see Danny giving her the puppydog look upside-down from the recliner. With a groan, she caved. "Fine. You can come to the party as a guest. You better be on your best behavior."

"Me?" Danny asked, wide-eyed and feigning innocence, "Why, whatever would I do?"

Sighing as she slipped out, Ember muttered, "I'm going to regret this..."

-S-P-A-C-E-A-N-D-T-I-M-E-G-A-P-

"Ms. Manson, you're going to regret this..."

"How am I going to have time to regret anything? I'll be dead."

"...Blunt as ever, Ms. Manson. But don't you think you would like to leave something in the Manson family?"

"Where?" Sam asked, frustrated and doing her best impression of an impatient teenager for the family lawyer. "My parents are both dead, and I couldn't stand to be near them most days anyways. I'm an only child, the only family member I ever felt proud to say I was related to was my Gran, and she died before I was out of college. The only living family members I have are only distantly related to me; I've only ever met them once and when I did, I hated them. Who, out of that wonderful pool of candidates, am I going to leave a few million dollars to?"

"Again, your second cousin Ophelia..." The lawyer, a tall stick of a man with wire-rimmed spectacles and a very nervous demeanor, attempted to interject once again, but Sam was having none of it.

"Is a stuck-up snob whose parents left her more than enough money when they kicked the bucket. Can we just get this over with, already? You're stressing a sick old woman, and the doctors here aren't above knocking you out for my sake. They've gotten rather attached to me. So, for the millionth time, the name I want written is Tucker Orville Foley. I leave six million dollars and thirteen cents to my best friend, Tucker Orville Foley, who was always there for me when I needed him. I've already written him into my memoir, I just need you to confirm the amount."

Giving in at last with a labored sigh, the lawyer began to take notes. "Six million dollars, fine. If you want to throw away your fortune, I suppose that's your own business. But... thirteen cents?"

"It's... a long story. Involving a bet. It doesn't matter. Not to you." The stubborn set of her jaw brooked no arguments, and the stick of a man from her past finally stopped trying to drag the rest of it into their conversation.

"You said something about a Jasmine Fenton, yes?" His posture was completely broken as he raised the pencil from the paper to await the next ludicrous instruction.

"Yeah... she's still working, old as she is, but I think good old Jazz could probably use a million... after all she's done for me, it's the least I could do."

-S-P-A-C-E-A-N-D-T-I-M-E-G-A-P-

"An' when I die, Imma... imma leave you... a city! Tha's it! A city! 'S least I could... could do."

"Phantom! Put the bottle down!"


	7. Transition

A/N: Okay, I couldn't remember for some reason if I'd posted today or not. I don't think so, but there's always the possibility that I'm wrong and posting two chapters. If so, goodie for everyone. Enjoy it now since I won't be posting tomorrow anyways. (Sundays will be, in general, a break from my regular stuff, and if I do post something, it will have to be something I've already written... not that I plan on updating any other stories daily, once I'm done with this one.)

There's a lot that I don't like about this chapter and a lot that I do. I think I pulled the ending off pretty well, because I was worried when the phrasing popped into my head that it would be too sudden and make Danny seem like a jerk. I think I padded it enough, though. I think.

As always, tell me what you think and enjoy the story. :D Oh, and I wanted to spare a quick thank you for all my loyal readers; I'm at 911 hits on this story, which is not only ironic; it's close to 1000.

* * *

Life goes on. To an outsider, the meeting seemed as if it was nearly forgotten about. Wills were written and changed and finalized and then edited all over again. Half-ghosts got drunk on ghost liqueur, still somehow managing to save the day from the DJ (guess what; he was evil). He even almost remembered some of it. Nurses and doctors and Tuckers and Jazzes passed through the hospital room of one Samantha E. Manson, though if you called her that, so help you. Reputations were patched and some semblance of a half-life was returned to the boy who'd been surviving as less than a ghost for too long. All in all, a strange sort of transitory normalcy returned. Everyone knew that another shoe had to drop, or something; that things couldn't stay the way they were for long, but nobody cared enough anymore to stop and wait for it. When it fell, they'd deal with the shock waves then. Damage control was their specialty, and they'd been doing it the eleventh hour practically all of their lives; no reason to stress it in the meantime. If only Danny had had the same mindset twenty years ago.

But he hadn't. No; he'd been a couple decades too slow on the uptake. Which was the predicament that he found himself facing in-between ghost attacks. It had been two weeks when he got tired of trying to stay away.

So, seventeen days after his first visit (he had, reluctantly, gotten a watch and synchronized it to the time in Massachusetts, where Sam's hospital was), he found himself back at the door to room 792, trying to convince himself that seventeen days was enough time for ideas to settle in without it being too long.

He knocked, unsure of the procedure and deciding to err on the side of caution.

The response was a groan and a vague muffled shuffling, until Sam said "Look, Mr. Jeffreys. I'm not in the mood to work on the will right now, so if you could come back, say, after I'm dead..."

"Not a lawyer," Danny replied as he opened the door, hesitantly poking his head in and hoping it would be well received.

"Danny?" Sam asked, shocked but not as infuriated as last time. "What are you doing back here?"

"Don't know. Wasn't quite sure what terms I was ordered away on last time. Figured it wouldn't be very good to disappoint if you were expecting a return visit." Raising both of his eyebrows at Sam in question, he slipped into the room and quietly closed the door behind him.

"Well, I suppose that's something. I figured you were just going to do whatever you wanted, so I didn't get my hopes up. It's what you've always done in the past, after all."

Danny didn't shy away from the venom in her voice, instead accepting it with a somber nod of the head. His eyes, so full of emotions that Sam didn't want to be tangled up in, shone as he continued to stare at her, and he made no move to speak.

Sam took a deep breath, and she was once again the first to look away. "Why?" she breathed, refusing to let her own eyes tear up. It didn't matter what she saw in his; he was the same as always. He was still just a half-human, afraid of death and pretending to be older than he was. It didn't matter how much he acted like he cared; he was still the same jerk who had left decades ago. Just _left_, never to turn back. Even now that he had, it didn't matter. He didn't want to talk about it, just wanted to move on like nothing had happened. Wanted to apologize and keep going, not bothering with the part where he was forgiven, He wouldn't even tell her why, like she didn't deserve to know.

And she knew she was lying to herself, but she didn't care. If it would let her go on hating him, she would convince herself the sky was purple.

"Well, if this is about why I'm back, I told you. I didn't want to make the same mistake a second time, not when it was such a stupid one the first time around." His voice was strong, but hollow. He knew what she was really asking, no matter how well he pretended not to.

"No, really. _Why?_"

"Well, you see, when you do something that hurts your friends and never really does any good in the first place, I usually call that-"

"Danny." Sam corrected, gently but firmly, turning back to look at him.

He sighed and ran one hand through his jet-black hair. Sam couldn't help but think that it was too black, her own now run through with silver despite having started the same color. "My response to _that_ question hasn't changed. I was being stupid, and... and you know the rest."

"No, I don't." Sam fumed, feeling her frustration from the previous visit return, "I want to know just what it was that kept you away for twenty-four years but not for twenty-five."

Danny's hand, never returned to his side, fisted in the black locks and he gave a quiet cry of frustration. "There was no good reason," he ground out, "I was being impulsive and young and-"

"You were fifty-two!" Sam quite nearly shouted, having to remember to reign herself in before the heart monitor spiked again.

"I know," Danny replied somberly, scrunching his eyes shut and falling back against the wall behind him. As a pained calm fell over him, the hand finally fell from its position in his hair. "And about twenty-one at heart. I was stupid, and I didn't really have any good reason. If I'd thought for two seconds about what I was doing, I wouldn't have left. But it just hurt too much to think."

"Are you telling me," Sam breathed, incredulously, "that in two and a half decades, you never once thought for two seconds about what you were doing?"

The noise that rumbled up from Danny's throat would have been called a laugh if there was any humor to it. "As much as it wouldn't surprise me, I'm fairly sure I thought about it at least that much. I tried not to, but... I just couldn't stand to come back and confront you guys."

"You seem fine with it now," Sam accused irately, nearly growling.

There was a pause as the accused fidgeted awkwardly, genuinely not sure what to say. "Well," he managed at last, "I suppose... half of the confrontation was taken care of for me."

"You mean Tuck?" Sam asked, incredulous.

Danny coughed before he answered. "Uh... yeah, suppose so."

Silence reigned for a long time. The hushed but dutiful ticking of Danny's new watch could be heard easily by both pairs of ears, not having to compete with any noise but two steady sets of breathing lungs. Danny himself was surprised that he could hear anything over the raucous tempest that was his mess of tangled thoughts, but the room itself was far too quiet.

"So you expect me to believe," Sam whispered after an eternity, not even looking at Danny, "That you left for absolutely no reason whatsoever."

"Yes, and I'm sorry about it-" Danny was about to go off on a spiel, but Sam wouldn't have it. Her interjection was quiet, but it silenced Danny's much louder tangent without any delay.

"Then what's to say that it won't happen again?"

For a few minutes, Danny was too stunned to answer. Even his rapidly churning brain silenced itself for a moment before turning over and revving into high gear. "I'm back, aren't I?"

"That's not what I asked. If there wasn't any reason at all why you left, then who's to say, with even less keeping you here this time, that you won't just stop thinking one day and do it all over again?"

"Sam, I've grown up a little. I know you probably don't believe it, but I have and I'm not nearly stupid enough to do the same thing twice like that. I can understand if you don't want to forgive me for what I've already done, but surely you don't think that I'm cruel enough to come back just so that I can leave."

"You've been back twice, Danny. No more than two hours if you put both visits together. I don't know anything about who you've become, any more than you know who I have. Right now, I can't even be sure you'll stick around long enough for that to change." Sam's ultimatum started off with quiet conviction, but by the end, the sides of her face were drooping along with her words. It was the first thing she'd said in a while for which she stared straight into his eyes, and Danny felt something choking him as he tried to reply.

"I'm not going to leave you, Sam." As the soft words made their way out into the air, it became apparent that emotion was not the only thing making it hard for him to speak. His voice came out a blue mist, and his eyes went wide as he saw it. Through years of training and working with his natural advantages, he had learned to hone in to the specific signature of agitated ectoplasm. It was a ghost that either had something nefarious in mind, or was at least angry enough to be a serious threat. Cursing with a shout, he sent an intangible punch through the wall, just to alleviate some of the fury building at being cut off like this. It didn't do much, but he couldn't afford to actually break anything. This was, after all, not his lair. He couldn't just punch through a hospital wall.

"I'm sorry, Sam. I've gotta go." His eyes were pained as he said the words, not unaware of the direct contrast they made to his statement mere seconds before. "I've still got responsibilities. I _promise_ you I'll be back."

She tried to say something to his back, but it was too late. He was Phantom again before she could get more than the first word out, disappearing through the ceiling she was going to glare a hole into if this became a regular occurrence.

If she hadn't already been propped up, she would have fallen back onto the bed dramatically. As it was, her entire body relaxed with an overpowering tiredness mingled with irritation, her eyes squeezing shut against the world. Her little room was too bright; too white. For nearly three months now, she'd been perfectly contented to stay in it so long as they let her out every now and again, but now it was too much. It was confining and white and lacked any real personality.

For some reason, it only struck her now that the room was the opposite of everything she'd ever stood for. Freedom and the right to be herself, no matter what the situation, represented for most of her life with copious amounts of black. Suddenly, she wanted out. Not just out for a walk and some fresh air, like she'd been pestering since day one, but really and truly out.

When Tucker stopped back in later, she pretended to be asleep. She had no clue why she was shutting out Tucker of all people, but she didn't want to talk to anyone. Somehow, Sam had the feeling that Tucker knew she wasn't really sleeping, but he turned the light out and left anyways. The very next day, she demanded _something_ be put on the walls, and then proceeded to pull every card she knew how to work until they finally let her outside at lunch.

She stubbornly refused to come back in until about an hour before the cafeteria started serving dinner, and was not exactly pleased to find one of Jazz's old princess posters (dug up from who knows where) hanging on the wall beside her bed.

If she'd had the strength to tear it down, she would've, but after spending so long outdoors, all she had the energy to do was work her way back to the bed and ask a somewhat hoarse "Was this Jazz's idea?"

"I wouldn't know," Tucker told her with a sparkle in his eye that gave him away, "but seeing how she's in charge of fielding complaints as well as patient psychology, I'd imagine that she had something to do with it."

"Not to mention that it's her poster," Sam added dryly. The glitter-glued "Jazzerincess" across the bottom insured that it could never be anyone's but hers, despite the fact that the last s and both z's had almost completely peeled off.

With a laugh, Tucker waved off the last sarcastic comment. "I think she's just a bit annoyed that you spent all day complaining to her and the doctors... which, in the end, goes back to her too. I mean, she even snapped at me for my wheedling, so you know she was out for _your_ head. Honestly, I think you're just lucky you got away with one poster."

When Sam didn't say anything, he sat down on the end of the bed with a sigh. "Look, Sam, we're all a little worried about you. There a reason why you decided to start making demands today?"

Sam rolled over onto her side as best as she could, putting her face-to-face with the princess poster, and pulled the thin standard-issue covers around her. "Where's my comforter?" She asked halfheartedly, knowing that Tuck wouldn't take the bait even if it was an honest question.

"I know you don't want to talk about it, Sam," Tucker sighed, putting a careful comforting hand on her calf, since it was close to him. "But you need to let us know if something's wrong."

There was a pause as Sam attempted to will Tucker into stopping, while said ancient friend willed up the nerve to ask his next question. Tucker's will won, only due to the impossibility of Sam's task. "Is this about the ghost last night?"

Sam's eyes shut forcefully against his words, and though Tucker couldn't see the movement from his position, he could feel her response. Choosing his words carefully and using his most sympathetic voice, he plowed on. "I know we don't often get ghosts in this part of Massachusetts, especially not so close... you're wondering if he was here or not, right?"

Despite the fact that Tucker had it completely wrong, despite the fact that she still didn't want to talk about it, and despite her stubborn will to stay strong when people were watching, Sam finally let herself break down. "Why? Why did... why did he do this to me?" Turning to look at Tucker, her eyes already wet, she was crying into his shoulder the second he opened his arms. For the first time since her breakdown when he'd left, Sam just let go and cried.

Tucker held her, knowing that it wouldn't be long before the ever-present vital monitor registered something was off and the doctors came in to check. He was already ready to tell them to take off; ready to direct his anger towards them since the real object was off being a moron on another plane of reality. When his voice came out, directed at Sam, it was surprisingly soft. "I wish I knew, Sam," he whispered, unknowingly staring at the stretch of ceiling Sam had been mentally attempting to obliterate, "I wish I knew."

-S-P-A-C-E-A-N-D-T-I-M-E-G-A-P-

At around the same time, Danny was in his bed at the lair, having trouble sleeping. Any other night, he would've been out patrolling the deep recesses of the ghost zone until he exhausted himself to sleep, but since his excursion to Clockwork's for a suitable watch, he was at least trying to follow Ember's advice about sleeping. He'd managed it two days so far in the two weeks since. Tonight didn't look like it was going to be another one in the tally, because he kept thinking back to the visit he'd made to Sam.

He hadn't gone back, since the ghost fight (well, drawn out attempts at diplomacy that had eventually turned into a fight, a chase, a near-surrender, and then another fight) had taken too long, and he figured she'd be asleep by now. The disappearing act left him wondering and second-guessing and worrying about the impression he'd left after he'd tried to convince her he wasn't going to just take off, but throughout it all, one thought kept coming back. Throughout all the arguing and the worrying and the failed attempts and convincing; through all the carefully thought out words and all the poor responses, there was one thing that had been consistent that seemed to command his attention.

Sam wanted him back. And that one thought made it impossible to stay still.


	8. Positive

A/N: Hello. Sorry I've been taking my time getting this up. I am loathe to say that, due to my busy schedule, I won't be able to update as often. I'm aiming for twice a week; hopefully once over the weekend and once during the week. But it's hard to say and life is crazy. So no promises. I wasn't going to post this tonight... though it's more like this morning, now, but I figured I had it done and I'd waited long enough. I'm not entirely happy with the ending, but it'll do.

While I do apologize since I know you guys were getting used to the daily updates, I don't feel horrible about it because most of them wound up being late at night and I know from looking at the numbers as well as the reviews that most people didn't read it every day as it updated. I am sorry, but I think you'll live. Hopefully the chapters will have a chance to be better this way. :/ We'll see. Anyways, enjoy.

* * *

Danny picked the date of his next visit carefully, because an idea was brewing in his head. Having made some kind of strange bond with Technus while he was drunk that he couldn't remember for the half-life of him (and probably didn't really want to), it wasn't hard getting the still-gullible ghost to set up and implement a bug that tracked and reversed the one still latent on Skulker's hardware. Tucker had told his faithful PDA that he was going out of town to check in on the company he had passed down to his kids for the weekend, all the way in Illinois.

The lack of Tucker meant that Sam would have a lot more free time and, hopefully, get bored. It was a mystery to him what she filled her time alone with, given that he hadn't seen her stashing anything away during his previous two visits, but the first had been just about right on Tucker's heels, and it was possible that the second was just a fluke.

When he knocked on her door this time, the response made him smile. "If it's who I _think_ it is, you'd better be ready with an explanation."

Opening the door, he only needed a small amount of effort to make the smile stick to his face. "Nope, no such luck."

Sam scowled, crossing her arms over her chest. Somehow, Danny had never realized how withered and fragile they'd become. He'd never known them to be anything but spindly, and they didn't betray that now, but before, if you looked closely, you could see traces of the whipcord muscle that made her threats so terrifying. Now, it was just skin. The realization almost made the smile drop off of his face, but glancing back at the lavender fire still in her eyes managed to hold it there. "Then I'm not talking to you."

Struggling, he managed to keep what would have been a grin as a mere smirk. Closing the door and leaning against it, he waved her reply off like the bluff that it was. "Oh, stop it. We both know Tucker's out of town and you're bored out of your skull. I've just come to keep you company."

"Have you considered for just a moment that Tucker can't spend every waking second with me and that maybe I have the capacity to keep myself entertained?" Her eyes narrowed and the opposing halfa's eyebrows raised. With a sigh, she reached over to the table beside her bed and grabbed a thick tome. "I've got a good book to keep me company."

"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix?" Danny read as the cover was flashed in his direction, and one eyebrow remained high up on the expanse of his forehead. "You'd already read that, like, a dozen times by the time I knew you."

"It's a classic," she murmured, even as she set the book back down.

Sensing the small victory, a smile lit up Danny's face once again. All in all, he was rather pleased with the idea and, for the first time, he sat down in the chair that he'd seen Tucker occupy during his first 'visit'.

"Well, I've got another one."

"You brought me a book?" Sam deadpanned, one eyebrow raised. Her intentional anti-enthusiasm wasn't lost on Danny, but he was still a bit too giddy trying to process the fact that she didn't want him to leave. Perhaps it was clouding his judgment just a little bit, and it probably wasn't a good thing to be getting so confident about something so small and indefinite, but he could hardly help it. He felt just an inkling of what things had been like not just twenty, but fifty years ago, at the prime of things, and he was clinging to it, perhaps too hard. Maybe he'd gone a bit mad after all; it was a distinct possibility.

Not letting on to any of the monsters whispering at him where his conscious met his subconscious, Danny just waved her comment off yet again. "No. A classic. Twenty questions." He was grinning broadly, with the youthful face that said quite plainly he was expecting her to be pleased.

She wasn't, particularly. Not that she was displeased, or anything, but it did nothing to sway her mood one way or the other. She almost felt guilty about that. "Twenty questions?"

"Last time I was here," Danny persisted, only a little deflated, "you said that neither of us know who the other one's become anymore. That's true, and I think we should do something about it. So, twenty questions. Ask me about anything at all: what I've been doing these past years, what my favorite color is, who's been keeping me company-"

"Why you left me in the first place..." Sam cut in, mimicking Danny's nearly singsong tone. His smile faded substantially at the interruption that really should've been expected.

"Anything but that," he clarified, sapphire eyes begging quietly.

With a sigh, Sam's head lolled back to her pillows before turning to look Danny in the eye. She made it clear that she was unamused. "That's not how you play twenty questions, you know."

A touch of the smile returned to Danny's face, touching his eyes more than his mouth in a nostalgic glint. "Maybe not, but it's the way we used to play it. Remember, on the late nights when we got bored? When Tucker would've suggested truth or dare but he wasn't around and we didn't have the inclination or the energy?"

The expectant shyness on his face was too much. Sam—curse her own attraction to those adorable features—just couldn't stand to ruin it. Unable to turn him down when he looked so open and hopeful, but unwilling to admit defeat, she instead glared at the ceiling (a spot above her bed, this time, for variation), arms crossed, and asked a terse question. "Where have you been?"

"The ghost zone," Danny replied immediately and somewhat snarkily. Sam looked at him incredulously, inches away from snapping and doing something that would have the doctors rushing in. She didn't know exactly what, but she was only inches from it.

With a shrug and a smile that was trying to be offhanded, Danny quite likely saved his own hide with a quick interjection. "You ask a vague question, you get a vague answer."

"Did I just waste my first question, then?"

"Nah," Danny decided after a minute. "You already knew that one. Practice round."

Taking a deep breath, Sam asked the only other question she could think of at the moment; something that had been quietly niggling in the back of her mind for a while and a worry that only came to fruition on the latest, sleepiest nights. "Where exactly have you been living?"

Danny bit his lip and fidgeted a little, and Sam could practically feel the whole visit going downhill. If he was struggling to answer such a basic question...

"That depends on your definition of 'living'." He said at last, and Sam raised an eyebrow. The words implied that she was caught on a technicality, but his voice said that there was more to it.

"Where have you been sleeping, then?"

He hesitated a moment, his face seemingly unable to settle on an emotion. Eventually, it wound up as a sort of secret smile, part nostalgia and part grimace. "Believe it or not, I've gotten myself a lair."

Shocked into genuine interest practically against her will, Sam's eyebrows shot up. "You? A lair?"

"Yeah, it's pretty strange; I know." Danny scratched his neck in a half-nervous gesture. "I wouldn't really say I'm _living_ there, though. At least, I haven't been. It's kinda just been a place to store stuff and crash when I'm completely exhausted. Not such a good ghost, am I?"

-S-P-A-C-E-A-N-D-T-I-M-E-G-A-P-

"I know that you're just wearing glorified hospital robes, so I'm curious; did you ever stop wearing black? Were you the big, scary, seventy-something goth lady that little kids weren't supposed to talk to?"

"I never _stopped_ wearing black; it's a nice accent color, at the least. And I've been to more than one funeral. It's a kind of requisite there, you know. Don't make make me sound like some creepy old lady just for being different. I've always liked dark colors, and that never changed. But no, I don't wear as much black as I did in the first half of my life."

"Okay, then what's your favorite color now?"

"I've developed quite a fondness for green, actually. I don't wear a whole lot of it, but I'd say it's my favorite color. And, just so you know, that was your thirteenth question."

"Green?"

"Is that number fourteen?"

"No, no. Never mind. Okay... when did you start speaking to your parents again? I know you didn't completely cut off from them, so I'm not wasting a question on if."

Somewhere along the line, Sam had run out of questions, and Danny had found himself with a limit of twenty. He also found that Sam wasn't nearly as lenient with the question-counting as he was. In the end, he wound up asking twenty-one before the conversation took off of its own accord.

-S-P-A-C-E-A-N-D-T-I-M-E-G-A-P-

"So, yeah... I'm not entirely sure what happened after that. It's kinda a big blur... which scares me, because Technus and Skulker have both been surprisingly agreeable since then, and Ember wouldn't talk to me for a few days afterward. As... backwards as it seems, I think that in the end, Skulker talked her out of whatever funk she was in. I want to know what happened, but I think I'm content to wonder, because I know what happened the first time, and she says that the party was the best one she ever had... well, once she started talking to me again, that's what she said. I _hope_ she's not just saying it... what do you think?"

There was no answer but soft breathing, and Danny looked down at his companion. She'd finally fallen asleep, and it was about time. He checked his watch; it was about twelve-thirty in the morning. She'd been fighting droopy eyelids for hours, and now that she was asleep, Danny felt his stomach knot up. With the fire not visible in her eyes and the stubborn set not anywhere in her relaxed jaw, a little trail of drool already winding down the side of her cheek from her open mouth, she looked so old. Jack-knifed in on herself, in some strange position on her side between a ball and a sprawl, she looked weak and defenseless and breakable. He felt, at once, a twinge of guilt for coming back and a crushing regret for having left in the first place. He was hurting her, leading her on like he was. But, at the same time, he never should have even thought to leave her on her own, defenseless to the kinds of threats that not only followed him, but stomped in his wake.

Sighing, he tucked the heavy comforter tighter around her, wondering idly when she had gotten it, and pressed a soft kiss to her forehead before his feet left the floor and he turned to leave.

Pausing just a moment, he looked back at her. What had happened to his lovely Sam to turn her into this? Time, yes, but despite the outward stubbornness, she was consenting to stay in a hospital. In a mostly-empty, long term hospital room, wearing the single color garments that they supplied. It was better than the practically-backless gowns that had given him and Tucker both nightmares in their youth, closer to pajamas, but he wondered if she'd even fought over it and, if so, what had caused her to give in. She never even mentioned it, which was unusual enough. Sam didn't just give in and wear something she didn't want to without complaint, even if she'd somehow managed to be out-argued. Something else had happened that had tamed the free, uncontrollable girl he had known years ago.

The shock was a dagger straight through his heart when the only possible explanation came whispering into his head. And yet... it wasn't really a shock at all, because he'd known it all along. It was him. It had always been him.

With a sigh, he left her alone, flying via his normal route off into the night-cum-morning and, eventually, the ghost zone.

Unable to sleep yet again, full of regret and worry and niggling thoughts that just maybe he could fix it, he decided to go through the pile of old ghost-fighting gear sandwiched between the fridge and the wall. And, tangled around the muzzle of a smaller ectogun designed for one-handed use, he found something he'd long since forgotten about.


	9. Beginning

A/N: I don't know why this took me so long... besides school, of course. It just... wasn't going quite where I thought it was, and it means that this thing will most likely be even longer than I anticipated... or, depending, perhaps about half the length.

This is... where it starts to get depressing again. I didn't anticipate the fluffiness that the last few chapters had been, and as a result, this is angstier than I had intended. It was supposed to be middling-ground fluff, but... Ah, well. Suppose I shouldn't spoil things.

I will TRY to get the next chapter out sooner, but it was just hard with this one. Life is too crazy. Especially because I still haven't gotten a single review on chapter 8. It's no big deal, really, and I'll get the chapters out one way or another, but they come faster when I'm pressured. Reviews (quality ones, at least) are incentive to finish faster; I hate letting people down.

Sooooo sorry for the delay, I know this isn't worth it, but... enjoy anyways?

* * *

The next opportunity for Danny to leave the Ghost Zone situated itself nicely in the calendar only a few spaces away from the last. Skulker decided to overstep his bounds and attempted to modify Cujo into a state capable of being hung on his wall, which ruined the tenuous truce between the two and snowballed wildly until Ember herself had to step in. Nothing short of her declaring her love for the endearing little ghost mutt would placate the imbecile of a hunter, and even that didn't fix all of the little conflict's far-flung side effects.

Despite the small-scale war to be alleviated, he still managed to return far more quickly than he had with any other visit so far. Perhaps because he was trying harder. After all, the meeting had actual purpose this time around.

His knock on the door was answered with a somewhat distracted "who is it?" and, somehow feeling both welcomed and estranged at the same time, he paused a moment. Just to ponder the intent. After a moment, he turned the knob on the door.

"Just your friendly neighborhood ghost," he called through the crack. When he heard the good-natured groan (as much as one can be, anyways), Danny knew it was safe to go in and swung the door open the rest of the way.

"Ugh... Danny, that stopped being funny when we were sixteen."

"Drat," the halfa replied, a crooked smirk cutting across his face, "I was hoping it would've aged a little and gotten better."

"Puns aren't the same as wine, Danny. Besides, something actually has to _change_ to age, much less to better with it." She made a half-chuckle sound before she realized exactly what she had said. The ghost of her past stood between her and the still-open door, now stonefaced.

"I... I mean..." she stammered, feeling a slight heat rise to her cheeks for the first time in ages. "I didn't mean anything by it. Just... just about puns." Years ago, she would have said more. In fact, even then it was strange that she didn't. But, as she thought about it, she wasn't really sure she didn't mean it.

Sure, he seemed to have matured a little, but that could have been purely by her remembered perception of him. She remembered a nervous, unsure half-ghost stuck in his twenties who was wrestling with a still-new problem much bigger than himself. Now, he seemed more at ease, but did that really mean anything? It had taken him twenty-four years simply to come to terms with the situation enough to face her; what did that say about how much he'd grown? In fact, it was possible she wasn't even remembering him right, after all that time.

How much could someone stuck in time really change?

An awkward silence settled over the room before Danny finally cleared his throat, bringing them both out of their respective reveries. "Well, I know I was just here a few days ago, and you probably don't want to see so much of me, but I... I got a little excited. Seems kinda silly now, really."

Sam raised an eyebrow at him. "Silly?" She wasn't entirely sure what to think, so she let the tangle of her thoughts fluctuate unhindered while she ignored them, waiting for her answer. He wouldn't be saying anything if he didn't want to bring it up; if he didn't plan on telling her. At least, she thought he wouldn't.

"Yeah. I... kinda found something. I'm not entirely sure how I wound up with it, but... no, wait. That's a lie. It wasn't that long ago; I can remember. But..." He took a deep breath, cutting off the rambling that seemed as if it had become uncharacteristic. From what she had known of him, it only made sense. "The point is, I've got something for you."

Reaching into the pocket of his torn up, ill fitting jeans (which had actually managed to be the topic of a question in their little game, and were apparently the same ones he had been wearing when he ran—not needing or wanting to be human very often had contributed to their still vaguely wearable state), Sam could see when his hand clenched around something, the small motion turning the curious silence into a pause. Her eyes drifted back to his face silently, noting the half-grimace there, before he spoke. "I'm really sorry I've kept it all this time. I... in all honestly, I completely forgot about it. It was essentially in the pile of stuff I never wanted to think about again."

The pause stretched, expecting Sam to break it, but she had no plans to try and speak. She had no idea—or, rather, far too many—what to say, and she wouldn't until she knew just what her mysterious gift was.

Danny sighed when she just continued to stare expectantly at him, both of the pair unnerved that the awkwardness between them hadn't truly been alleviated by their last visit. Taking a few steps closer until he was right beside the bed, he pulled his hand out of his pocket and extended it, fingers still covering the palm that would have otherwise been facing the ceiling. Looking at her for some kind of signal—he didn't know what, but she wasn't giving it regardless—he slowly uncurled his fingers, exposing a glint of gold to the open air.

Sam's mouth hung a little agape and, despite herself, she shuffled into a straighter seating position. Her eyes were wide when she reached out and plucked the delicate thing out of his hand. It unfurled itself into something impossible not to recognize, and all she could do was stare as the little charm was brought to her eye level. Not a heart, as most of its kind boasted, but a somewhat stylized music note, resting against the semi-rectangular background of what was presumably sheet music. The strange act of gravity spun it around on its chain until she could see what was inscribed on the back. Just one word; _Expression_. The letters had to be tiny to fit it all on the small space, but Sam could have read it blind.

Her eyes teared up more than a little, and if she'd had enough working brain cells to care, she would have noticed that it seemed physically impossible to close her mouth completely. But, for the same reason that she couldn't quite close it, she didn't quite care. A long-closed box of memories burst open and assaulted her mind at the sight of the little keepsake.

She couldn't even remember any more the first time she'd heard the story. It just seemed like something she'd always known, in the not-quite-perfect retrospect of a decrepit old woman.

Her gran had learned to play the piano practically before she could walk, plagued eternally by uptight, Orthodox Jewish parents. Instead of hating it, like most kids in her place came to do, she had come to a begrudging truce with the instrument. It helped that she was a fantastic player. When she discovered its younger sister, the keyboard, she fell in love. For a while, though not in the version of the story she told Sam's parents, she was even in a band. At some point, she also picked up the electric violin.

Music had been her life for a long stretch, and the locket spoke to that. A gift from her husband, it didn't say _love_ or _my dearest_ or _forever_, or anything even trying to be romantic. It wasn't a gift about him, or even them, but one about her. Sam had always thought that the intent behind it was a little romantic in itself, and, honestly, she was glad for the sentiment. She'd never seen much of her grandfather, since he'd always been busy with meetings at the patent office or his stock broker. He'd died when she was fairly young, too. The locket, when her gran followed, had become hers, and the lack of any third person ostensibly attached to it made it feel more personal. It was a link between her and her gran; no one else needed to be involved.

Sam glanced back at Danny, who was visibly growing more and more unsure by the second, and at last managed to close her mouth. She knew that he probably would have appreciated an attempt at speech more, but she had nothing to say. There couldn't possibly be anything to say that would cover all of the thoughts and emotions battling in her head to form some vague notion of a reaction. Out of everything she had been expecting, this had definitely not been on the list.

And, for some reason, looking at a nearly-twenty-year-old Danny Fenton in ratty old jeans and a surprisingly new T-shirt, holding the locket that was one of her last links to her grandmother, she felt like she was back at the funeral all over again. Her grandma had settled long ago into her place as a fond memory, but Sam's life didn't seem content to stay settled any longer. Upset at far more than just a long-ago death, something inside of her gave way.

She cried. Completely startling the both of them, the tears just started to flow. She pressed her lips together, trying to keep it from turning into a sobbing fit, but it wasn't long before one wrenched its way out.

Danny, for his part, was shocked. He'd been expecting Sam to be glad to get the necklace back, nostalgic at the very least. Sam wasn't much of a crier, to his knowledge. She never had been, and he couldn't see a reason why that would've changed. She was strong-willed and independent, as she was constantly reasserting, and she'd been picked on for long enough that it wasn't easy to really get to her. In all of his memory, he could count on his two hands the number of times he'd seen Sam cry. Most of them had been hot and silent. Sobbing was not a motion that became her, especially old and nearly-frail as she was now.

And, once his mind had worked past the shock, all he could think about was that it had to stop. Mimicking the position Tucker had taken on the bed merely a week before, he wrapped his arms around her. Sam hated him for it, but her hands sought purchase in his shirt anyways. Neither of them said a word as Sam cried into the space between his shoulder and his neck, sobbing as little as was possible. In fact, if it weren't for the desperation with which she clung to him, he would have thought she was winding down.

The continued irregular breathing did eventually draw enough attention for one doctor to amble in and check that everything was okay, but once he saw the situation, he left pretty hastily with Danny's quick, silent reassurance.

Eventually, she managed to stop crying, only to fall asleep. Carefully, and with the assistance of some selective intangibility, Danny managed to extract himself from her sleeping grasp. The hand still holding the locket instinctively clutched tighter around it, the other hand curling around that one.

Once he'd made sure she was comfortable, he just stood there for a moment, inspecting her sleeping form. As much as he appreciated being able to stay with her until she fell asleep, he didn't want the privilege if it meant he had to watch her cry. Maybe the gift hadn't been such a good idea... though he couldn't imagine what about it would've made her bawl like that.

He'd been expecting... well, not sudden forgiveness, or for heaven to open up with a chorus of angels, but... not _that_. A smile, at least. Maybe some little awed chuckle that he'd held onto the little trinket so long. What was it about the little gold memento that had suddenly made her so... emotional? Maybe she was having a bad day. Maybe a bad week. Maybe he should've just brought chocolate.

Utterly baffled but not getting anywhere else anytime soon, he let invisibility and intangibility sweep over him before a quick thought sent him out via his normal exit. He didn't know why he didn't go out the actual door when it was the way he came in, save the fact that he didn't have to deal with anyone via his own route. Visiting Sam tended to leave him pretty drained. And, usually, far too confused to talk to anyone with a remotely normal life.

-S-P-A-C-E-A-N-D-T-I-M-E-G-A-P-

When Tucker walked in, she was staring at her hands. "Sam?" he asked, surprised by the softness of his own voice. After returning from a four-day weekend-ish trip to see the kids, he'd expected to return jubilantly, needing to cheer Sam out of whatever gloomy funk she'd fallen into. He'd expected to need to assure himself that she was okay, and that the usual impossible smile would refuse to move from his face while he did just that, keeping up the charade for Sam, because they were both much more weary than they looked, and they just needed to pretend.

In fact, he'd still been planning to do just that up until he finished signing his name in the visitor's log. That was when the nurse cornered him with something between a plea and a request for information.

He wasn't a doctor, and it wasn't his business to make real decisions about the patients, but he did know most of them very well. And, the gawky man admitted nervously, he was worried about Sam. Someone she'd never once mentioned before—some young man whose parents she'd known before their deaths—had started to visit her fairly often, though he could never find a name in the logs. And she'd been getting much more easily agitated since then, her vitals skewing enough to require staff to check in on two separate occasions while he was there. The most recent, he'd been told, she was crying.

The unnerving news was why Tucker opened the door softly, as if afraid he would run into the mystery guest. Which was why Sam didn't even look up from the reverie she was in, staring longingly at some shimmering glint of metal poised in the palms of her hands.

Inside her head had been a maelstrom, with too many droplets reflecting too many ideas until the winds swept everything left even resembling order into chaos.

Why had he kept it so long? Didn't he know it was important to her? But she'd _given_ it too him; practically forced him to take it, so it wasn't his fault. In fact, why _had_ he given it back? It had been given as a promise; as an expectation of one being kept. The little niggling guilt that would, eventually, bring him back to her. But he'd forgotten about it. And, when he remembered, he'd given it back. What did that say? That he didn't want it, or he didn't understand?

He really was stuck back in the past all those years ago, not just at his parents' deaths, but at her Gran's. She had changed without him and he hadn't had time to change at all; there was just too much distance between them. But he'd come back. It was true; he had come back. He'd even given her the evidence. Her niggling little spark of guilt _had_ worked eventually. Eventually had just come much later than she'd hoped. And, perhaps, not even for the reasons she had been hoping for.

When Tucker walked in, she had finally reached a conclusion. "I hate him," she said calmly, her voice strained only by the earlier tears. Otherwise, it was completely void of emotion, sucking in anything and everything. "He won't stop playing mind games, and he doesn't even know the rules."

"What?" Tucker asked, louder but still too soft.

"He's just this big blur of innocence and age, and he won't pick one. He _can't be both_." Finally, her voice cracked a little, the blankness showing the delirium underneath.

Stress and worry pulled at the already-wrinkled edges of Tucker's eyes. "_Who_, Sam? Who are you talking about?"

Quietly moving one hand to pinch the chain between her fingers, a sort of ironic smile almost pulled at the edges of her lips. Slowly raising the golden treasure from the palm of her hand until it dangled in the air, turning unevenly at the whim of gravity. "He's back." Making some sort of half-crazed noise between a laugh and a sob, her eyes finally tore away from the locket to plead silently with Tucker for escape. "Can you believe that, Tuck? He's back."


	10. Change of Pace

A/N: Ugh. Sorry it's been so long; I fell off a bike, and that sapped my will to do anything but sleep for a couple weeks. This was such a hard chapter to write, and I don't know why... well, mostly it was just the beginning. I hope he doesn't come off too OOC...

Sorry I don't have something better to offer as pennance, but this will have to do. Feel free to murder me in your comments. Honestly, it would just be nice to get some reviews every once in a while. As it is, that's one reason why this one took so long to churn out; I wasn't sure if anyone really cared. I am stubborn enough to finish it, but how fast that'll happen is questionable.

* * *

"What do you mean I can't see her?" It was a disturbing development, the nurse meeting him at the door just in time to deny him entrance. Up until them, Danny had taken care to have minimal interaction with the hospital staff and... well, everyone except for Sam. Now, one nurse he only vaguely remembered was calling him by name, and if the timing of the meeting indicated anything, he'd been expected.

Needless to say, he was worried. This sudden and complete deviation from the norm certainly didn't bode well for things in general. He'd become a creature of habit in the previous decades, and change tended to put him on edge. Of course, the fact that aforementioned nameless nurse was refusing outright to let him to his goal wasn't helping.

"I mean that we're all worried about Ms. Manson, and that your authority isn't high enough to make me let you in."

"Forget authority; you obviously don't even know who I am. I can get through no matter what you try to do to stop me." His posture shifted to be somewhat more aggressive, teeth and hands simultaneously clenching together as he did his best to loom. Being a half-ghost lent its advantages in that department. Despite the obvious signs that the gawky nurse wanted to turn tail and run right then, he did an impressive job of standing his ground. In a better moment, Danny would have recognized that as a quality he admired. One that generally made a good hero. He was seeing just a bit of green at the moment, however, and instead opted to push his advantage.

"I'm probably double your age, if not triple. You don't know the first thing about me."

The nurse took a deep breath, eyes closed, as he steeled himself and then stood up a little bit straighter. "I know that Ms. Manson wouldn't be friends with someone who would think so little of hurting a person."

"You hardly know her if you have to call her Ms. Manson," Danny said with a glare, sure that it was a sentiment she'd repeated more than enough herself. A little bit of his aggression died down as he thought of the reason he was there, of how ridiculous he was being... of the fact that the nurse was completely right. In his head, a much-younger Sam was hitting him in the shoulder and telling him to calm down because he was being an idiot. "Besides," he added, relaxing visibly but still looming, "I don't need to hurt you to get through."

Suddenly, there's a hand on his shoulder. He whips around, fairly ready for a real threat. To his surprise and, to some extent, panic, it's Tucker. Looking calm as ever. "Maybe he can't stop you, but I can." His level gaze unnerved Danny more than he'd like to admit, and he opened his mouth before he even knew what he was going to say. He never found out, however, because Tucker cut him off.

"Sam told me. Just... not right now, okay? She's confused. I think you and I need to talk."

Something about the way the shorter, much more elderly boy looked at him told him that it would be a bad idea to argue. With a very terse nod, he allowed himself to be led away from the door that had been his destination.

-T-I-M-E-A-N-D-S-P-A-C-E-G-A-P-

"So," Tucker said around a mouthful of the horrid hospital meat product, his manners obviously not much improved, "You're telling me that after all that enigmatic crap, what finally broke her was you giving her grandma's locket back?"

Danny took a deep breath and followed it up with a long swig out of his soda. When the glass was back on the table and he was bereft of any other means of delaying his answer, he nodded heavily. "Yeah. I guess... Guess I struck a nerve or something? Kinda like what happened with me and my parents' deaths?" He thought he'd moved on enough to talk about it, but he still winced a little as the words came out.

Tucker swallowed, tapping the fork to his chapped lips as he thought the situation through. "I don't know, Danny. She has her moods just like she always has. And you were always the one who knew how to read her, not me. I've just kinda been riding by the seat of my pants since you left. If you don't know why she's upset... well, I guess we're all doomed."

Danny scowled a little bit at his quickly-emptying glass, unwilling to actually scowl at someone who was trying to help him out... for now. He would have inevitably succumbed to the urge by the end of the day. "You seem cheery about all of this."

"Sorry, I'm old. And a guy. I don't have the energy left to hold a grudge, and reunions tend to be happy occasions, regardless of the circumstances." He laughed momentarily at himself, before deciding that meat was more important and stuffing his face once again.

"I thought you said you hadn't found the time to get old?" Danny asked slyly, willing to let seriousness and endless questions go for a moment.

Tucker barked out a laugh, completely uncaring to the fact that he was spewing just a little bit of mystery meat as he did so. "You really think I wasn't lying through my teeth back there? Sam would've killed me, too, if she'd have known exactly what I did."

With that, Danny's entire world shut down. "Wait... you were... what else... how much... what exactly were you lying about?"

Tuck's brow furrowed together for a moment before realization dawned. He swallowed what was in his mouth, the moment of his bliss feeling like an eternity to the impatient halfa, and then he spoke. "Oh, don't worry. I meant it when I said she wasn't over you. I thought that much would've been obvious from your own interactions with her... suppose you always were a bit oblivious, though..."

"And she really hates me?" He cut in, needing to know and not willing to listen to the perchance-partly-senile ramblings of his once-upon-a-time best friend.

Tucker's expression sobered instantly, his eyes holding all the knowledge of his years for another rare moment. Danny realized then what had unnerved him earlier about his friend's gaze; even now, he spent too much time laughing. When he was serious, it pulled the wrinkles on his face the wrong way. It made him look too old, and like a man who was not one to be messed with.

"I think you know the answer to that as well as I do." His voice sounded like it was trying to be apologetic, but failing. Like there was just a trace of the grudge he'd claimed earlier that he couldn't hold. Danny could hardly blame him; he'd had to pick up the pieces he was sure he'd left behind. Sam normally would have been the one taking charge, strong enough to carry the world on her shoulders for a while while it healed, but in his mind, she was amongst the things that needed re-piecing.

With a sigh, Danny drained the last of his soda. He was expecting for a moment for the ice to hit him in the face before he remembered he'd asked for it without since he could keep it cold himself. The little detail, for some reason, made him realize above everything else just how long he'd been gone from the human world. Two and a half decades was a long time. Twenty-four years... he wasn't sure how many days; he'd never been good at math. Twenty-four sets of three hundred sixty-five, though... that had to be a few thousand. If three years was about a thousand days... that was what, eight thousand? Too long. Too long to go without eating at a restaurant, or seriously just sitting down with a human. With the species he'd once acclaimed as his own kind.

The two old men sat for a few minutes, one drowning in his thoughts and the other letting him. Tucker steadily made his way through the plate that should have been too much food for a man of his size and age. His stomach was a black hole, however, defying all expectation. Just like always.

"Eight thousand days," Danny finally said aloud, albeit an odd, strangled half-whisper. "I've probably only slept a few hundred out of that... what happened to all that time?"

Tucker, not missing a beat, swallowed what was in his mouth and speared another forkful. "You've been busy. I've been busy. Heck, even _Sam's_ been busy. It's actually been closer to nine thousand, but they weren't nine thousand days of _nothing_. That much time doesn't just disappear, unless you're... say, an angsty vampire."

And there it was. He knew it. Unable to help himself, Danny was actually scowling at Tucker this time. The fact that he had no other possessions to reasonably scowl at certainly helped. "Don't you dare compare my life to Twilight. I don't care what you have up your sleeve, I can kill you and then haunt your grave."

"That seems like more of a punishment to you than to me." Tucker smirked, glad to see that his best friend wasn't sinking too far into depression. Regardless of Danny's hesitancy to use the term, which he could've guessed even though he didn't actually know of it, he still considered it the right word. After Danny left, he'd been first too bitter, then too busy to even consider finding another, and after that, no good candidates came along. Sure, some were decent, but he just couldn't justify replacing Danny. No friendship, no matter how good, ever felt that natural again. So it was just him and Sam, both the sibling that the other had never had. Sam and Danny were irrevocably his best friends, and there was little either could do about it.

"I don't know. Having some place to haunt might actually do me some good. I've been more ghostly than not as of late." Danny chuckled in return, mostly genuine.

"Really? I hadn't noticed."

Their banter continued for a while, natural as could be expected and probably more so, depending on whose expectations we speak of. There was a strain in the occasional pauses, as even men both waiting for death to claim everything they ever knew couldn't just pick back up after a quarter of a century. It was too much.

With a glance at his watch, Danny's eyes widened. "Wow, I've been here for hours. Surely you've got something to do."

Tucker just shrugged, passing it off as nothing. His plate had long since been emptied, shoved off to the side and forgotten. As a matter of fact, guests were now slowly wandering, limping, and being wheeled in for dinner in a trickle. "Not really. Not so long as I'm here. Most of my business is back in Illinois with the kids. I don't really bother keeping track of much more than the days and the mealtimes. You, however, seem to have an impeccable sense of timing for someone who disappeared off the face of the earth for more than twenty years."

_It's a new development._ "That's right. You've probably found the time to settle down and make yourself a family since then, haven't you. Kids, even. So, who'd you wind up marrying? Anyone I know?"

"Well..." Tucker began, but was cut off by a shrill scream from the other end of the cafeteria.

"Daniel James Fenton! What in Pariah Dark's name are you doing here?"

The pair spun to see who had recognized him to call out all the way across the rather spacious room, even though one already knew. One very aged, very enraged Jazz stood in the doorway to the cafeteria, expression somewhere between a deer in the headlights and an axe murderer.

The halfa, despite having been in perfect control of his powers for more than half of his life, flickered in and out of visibility.

* * *

A/N: Pssst! I'll let you in on a secret. I haven't actually decided who Tucker married yet. Honestly, I don't know if I will. I plan on avoiding it, if at all possible. Unless I get a really good idea. In my head, I've pretty much decided that if it's anyone who's not Jazz, they've already died by this point. Feel free to superimpose... or to attempt to sway me to a specific pairing. Who knows, it just might work. 0.0

Anyways, I'm off to go die now. Next chapter is whenever.


	11. The Passage of Time

A/N: Wow, I finished this one fast. I don't know why, but it was just pretty easy to write... probably because it wasn't originally going to be included. Those are always easier than actual PLOT... though I think this does help move the plot along. Now there's a first.

So, hope you people enjoy the double-update after all this waiting. Who knows how long the next one will take... maybe I should just start saying "Updates Weekends." Really, I just need to start updating my other stuff, because I have so much crap sitting on my computer just waiting. Enjoy, and remember: reviews are appreciated.

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The evening, depending on your viewpoint, took a sharp turn downhill from there. It wasn't such a steep incline for Jazz, in fact it was rather like a roller coaster, and the various patients didn't really know what was going on, but once Danny had been parked in his sister's office and shoved rather forcefully into the chair, he and Tucker would both agree that things weren't looking so bright.

Currently, his aforementioned redheaded sister was attempting to blow off a little steam before she gave in and punched him or something, pacing angrily from one side of the room to the other in front of him. Honestly, Danny was becoming afraid that she was going to give herself a stroke. After a long stretch of tense silence he didn't dare break, she finally took a deep breath and whirled on him.

"Explain."

The one terse word was too demanding of an answer for him to ignore. "Well, Tucker I'm guessing got news that Sam was terminal, and he came to find me-"

"No!" Jazz roared suddenly, her entire body escorting the word like a whip. "I mean what _the hell_ do you think you were doing? Leaving all those years ago? Do you know what you put us through? Not just Sam, but all of us! How many days we spent honestly thinking that you were just blowing off some steam, that you'd be back soon? The days turned into years, and we still expected you to come back eventually with some sense finally knocked forcefully into your head. I want to know why you left and why in the name of Rip Van Winkle it took you so long to get back."

Danny paused, fully aware that he deserved the brunt of the punishment but hardly able to stand up to the onslaught of the same questions for a third time. With Sam, the anger had been different. She'd openly hated him, more attempting to get him to leave than to torment him. But with Jazz, it was different. Her anger burned much hotter because she still cared. He could tell that she'd still believed, just a little, to the very last day that he would just come back, or that something spectacular would happen and he wouldn't be able to stay away. That was probably what hurt the most. After everything he'd done to them, to everyone else he'd known, Jazz still cared. She still _believed_ in him. Just like she always had, and just like he'd never deserved.

He took a deep breath of his own, trying to keep everything under control because she did, of all people, deserve an explanation. "I... I'm sorry, I really am. I was in shock, and I didn't really want to face anyone, and... I just needed to get away. I needed a distraction, a little time to just stop thinking. I ran off to the Ghost Zone, though you can probably guess that. It's... at the forefront of my mind was Sam, of all the crap I'd put her through already and how I didn't want to drag her through any more. I just don't think I had it in me to watch her, day by day, get to the place where she is now. It's the same with the two of you, too, though."

Running one of his hands through his hair, putting pressure on his scalp, it eventually came to rest at the back of his head, almost cradling it. The words weren't coming out right. He felt like he was in school all over again, in English class trying to think of the right words to use for his essay.

Jazz just stared at him for a while with a significant pause, though something about the way she stood made it obvious that it was her turn to speak. "Danny, do you know why she's here?"

The question caught him off-guard. He had wondered, but... no one had ever seen fit to tell him. He wasn't a welcome enough guess. "No."

"A few months after you left, she was diagnosed with chronic depression. As a registered psychologist, I can't imagine that the two aren't connected. It's something she's been battling for far too long, and she's been taking the meds on and off for the past twenty-five years. They finally took their toll on her system. That's also why she's been so... off. If you haven't noticed. Her serotonin levels might be fine, but the emotional side of it doesn't go away quite so easily." The fleeing of her anger left her voice temporarily hollow. An emotional void breaking bad news long overdue.

"I... what?" Danny's eyes widened as he processed what his sister was telling him. Her face wrinkled with the worry and sorrow and touch of anger that didn't show in her voice, she looked ancient. The long-forgotten voice of his past finally catching up to him. "You... you're telling me that I'm the reason she's like that?"

Jazz took a deep breath, weighing her words in her mind. Old and wizened as she was, she recognized the feeling of a pivotal moment weighing heavy in the air. "The old age part was unavoidable. And it's hard to say what could have happened. Sam's strong, and she's made it through alright... but I don't think it would've developed like this if it weren't for the mental and emotional stress of trying to deal with you just leaving. I practically checked into a depression clinic myself." Her mouth was twisted for the last sentence, trying to be a sarcastic smile, but it just turned into a sort of apologetic grimace. Closer to what she felt, at least.

Danny buried his head in his hands, not sure what to do. Everything wrong with the universe was his fault. He thought he'd been doing alright, but come to find Sam had every reason to hate him. He'd endorse it if it meant her depression was easier to handle. In fact, maybe even if it didn't. "God... I had no idea... I was just so afraid. I was too young and too old, and my parents had just died and I looked like I was twenty-five. Some mornings I _felt_ like it... And I was going to keep looking twenty-five when you died, and when Sam died, and it was just too much... I was terrified. I didn't want to have to live forever with that weighing me down."

"So you thought it would be better if you just missed our deaths completely? If you just ran away and pretended, off in our own little worlds, that we were all twenty-five too?"

Danny's hands crept back to his neck, fisting in his hair. "Yes... no... I don't know!" For a moment, he was tempted to get up and pace, but the urge was defeated surprisingly quickly. After a moment, he just sighed, resigned. All of the tension seemed to simultaneously leave his body. "I was just stupid and irrational, and I thought maybe things would go away if I ran far enough."

"Why'd you stay away, then?" He looked up, surprised by how soft the question was, and was almost overpowered by the candid desperation plastered across his sister's face. This was something that had kept her awake at night; something she had wondered endlessly over, worrying if they were doing something wrong.

Steeling himself to disappoint, he took a deep breath followed by a heavy gulp. "I was just trying pretty hard not to think about what I'd done. In all honesty, I thought things might get easier if I stayed away."

-S-P-A-C-E-A-N-D-T-I-M-E-G-A-P-

Anger and shoves turned to tears which turned, eventually, to comfort and tea. Danny wasn't entirely sure when she'd picked up a propensity for tea that wasn't cold and more sugar than anything, but he was glad. The foreign, tasty beverage seemed to warm something other than just his hands and his throat. On top of that, the image of his gray-and-red-headed sister bringing in three mugs of steaming tea on a tray was one he'd never forget. She made such a good elderly nurse... psychologist... whatever it was exactly she did at the hospital.

"You know," she said after a while, once Danny could start to see the bottom of the mug through his tea, "I don't go by Jazz anymore. Jasmine, mostly. Some people call me Dr. Pachter, but you know how that goes."

"I'm your brother," Danny joked, mood fortified by the warm tea now lounging in his stomach, "You'll always be little Jazzy to me. You're just lucky I'm not calling you Jazz the Spaz anymore." The wicked smile spread across his face, a vague threat glinting in his eyes.

"Naw, I know better. It's too long and you're lazy." Jazz parried without even opening her eyes, taking a long sip of warmth instead of giving her brother his satisfaction. It was all too easy to fall back into the routine.

"You've caught me." Danny shrugged, the slightly malicious smirk never fading from his face. "How is Mr. Dr. Patcher, by the way?"

"It's Pachter, and you know it." Jazz rolled her eyes, and receiving a sarcastic 'sure' from her brother.

"Anyways, he's in an assisted living home. It's kinda hard. Alzheimer's runs in his family, so it's not like we didn't see it coming, but... he remembers me most days, but it's always hard when he starts asking when you and Sam are going to come visit."

"Maybe one of these days we will," Danny mused quietly, returning to drink the last of his now-lukewarm beverage. It cools quickly when you're not paying attention. A little more loudly, he asked "Did kids ever..."

"No," Jazz cut him off quickly, and Danny didn't miss the way her fingers tightened ever-so-slightly on her mug. "Probably for the best, though. I never was good with kids."

Danny sighed, setting his mug down on one of the nearly-blank parts of his sister's overflowing desk and walking over to her. Kneeling down beside her chair, he wrapped his arms around her. "I'm sorry, Jazz. I really am. I should've been here for you all these years, for everything you've had to go through. I've been a bad brother, and I know it. Is there anything I can do to make up for it?"

"Honestly?" Jazz asked in a quiet voice, both hands wrapped firmly around the mug but her body leaning into the embrace.

"Honestly."

A little smile crept over her face, somewhat teasing. "You can make amends with Sam so she'll stop being so miserable all the time."

Tucker laughed from his post by the door, shocking them both as they'd forgotten he was there. Danny wondered for a moment when Tucker had learned to shut up, but only smiled back at his sister. "You and I both know that I'm trying. It's definitely not a small task, though."

* * *

A/N: Before anyone asks; no, Mr. Pachter is not anyone in particular. It's just a name. Not everyone has to spend their life with someone from highschool. Plus, I don't really see Jazz connecting with anyone until after college. And yes, that is a reference to Kim Possible.


	12. Life Changing

A/N: Well, I guess I've gotten to the point where I'm writing this mostly for myself. No one seems to care any more, but I suppose that's okay. The dangers of writing for a dwindling fandom and all. Also, I think I've realized that it's a lot healthier if I only try to churn these out on weekends, so that's what I'll stick to. I'll aim for at least one every weekend, possibly two if I can manage. After this chapter, I will tentatively estimate another four or five chapters to follow. The 'or five' is in case it gets away from me again. This story is continually taking on a life of it's own, and I've realized that, somehow, I've created an entire 'verse. *le gasp* For instance, the majority of this chapter... I don't know quite when I became a TxJ fan, but my inner writer was screaming at me to put in some TxJ action. I didn't, for the most part, but I suppose what I did write is open to interpretation.

Sorry for the rambling. I know no one reads my A/Ns anyways, so its not like anyone cares but me. Enjoy the story that maybe someone might actually read eventually.

* * *

Danny checked back in with his sister every day for the next week, a plan of action that had been reached as a group. While Jazz's not-remotely-subtle hint that Danny was only forgiven if he planned on visiting (and often, as his ghost powers took away any real excuse to do otherwise) had carried most of the weight of the decision, Danny didn't want to completely botch things with Sam, either. As she was being fairly moody, our favorite halfa was left waiting for her whims to take a less melancholy turn. Jazz and Tucker's reports were the only source of information he had while he waited. A few other factors played minor roles, but the decision was made pretty much on the first two alone.

It was over tea in Jazz's office as she was attempting to explain for the millionth time what she actually did at the hospital (Danny, by this point, understood, but intended to continue referring to her as Odd-Job-Jazz in feigned ignorance so long as it annoyed her) that Tucker finally came in with the go-ahead. They had explained already, secondhand from Sam's own pained recounting, how the locket dredged up memories, and they'd all been awaiting an opening for Danny's return since.

"I think it's all clear for you to visit, if you want. She's still petulant as ever, but it's as good a mood as we'll ever get." Tucker grimaced a little, only halfway kidding. Danny put down his cup the second the sentence was finished, all thoughts of tea forgotten.

"For real? I'm all good to just... walk in?" Something, after a week of being forced to wait and several days before that by his own accord, seemed too easy. Surely this wasn't why he was waiting... he didn't even know what he was going to say. After his latest faux pas, surely he had to... jump through hoops or raise the dead or... or something? Solve a Sudoku puzzle at the least!

"It's all you ever did before," Jazz reminded, a little bit of nervous excitement showing through the calm mask she usually tried to display. "What would make this time any different?"

"I don't know... the fact that I've had to wait? That I was stopped at the door for my last attempt? That I... damaged her psyche by being a bumbling idiot or something?" After standing up, he found pacing unsatisfactory and proceeded to float from one end of the room to the other, a chill almost visibly congealing around him.

"I'll give you bumbling, and maybe even idiot on your bad days, but I don't think even you have the power to 'damage her psyche'. A lot of this is just the meds. Despite the fact that they're what put her here, she's still not cleared to be off of them." Tucker was leaning against the door frame, watching in something akin to amusement as his best friend degraded into a bundle of nerves. "Just go get it over with. Like ripping off a band-aid."

"What? Sam is not something I want to get _rid of_. She's not a _band-aid_." Danny rounded on Tuck, who immediately proceeded to hold his hands up before him, the universal gesture of sarcastic innocence.

"Well, then. Go see her. Or else you might not _need_ to get rid of her."

Danny glared at him for a moment, bending down at the waist so that his feet didn't have to touch the floor, and Tucker drew upon the courage from the first time he'd faced the matured-but-not-aged Danny in the Ghost Zone. It was easier now, with the more human blue eyes shining at him. No matter that the same chill hung in the air, he'd never quite been able to get over the inhuman glow in the Phantom eyes.

Neither boy said another word, and the more ghostly of the pair eventually brushed past the winner of their unspoken competition on the way out of the office, taking the chill with him. After waiting a moment, Tucker collapsed into one of the chairs.

"Are you sure they're gonna be okay?"

Tucker scrubbed his hand across his face before answering, looking a million years old now that his mask had dropped. Jazz was the only one that he ever let his guard down for any more, since he had long since learned that she could see past his masks no matter how good they were. "Honestly, no. I don't know why he's here, and I don't think he does either. With Sam's attempt to justify and tame her tangle of emotions, that's not gonna hold up. This is just going to keep happening until he finally really looks at what he's doing and prioritizes. Knowing Danny, that's not going to happen."

Jazz stared at her ever-cooling mug for a long moment, attempting to will herself into taking another sip of the usually-calming drink but no longer in the mood. "Is she even in a good mood, then, or was that a lie too?"

"No, she's back to the usual ratio of sincerity to sarcasm. It's as good a day as it'll ever be, and it's not like we have Danny's nice, round eternity to wait. I mean, we all know that Sam's days are numbered."

Setting her own cup down next to Danny's to be forgotten, Jazz sighed and walked around her desk to kneel down beside Tucker. Draping one arm over his back and making slow, comforting circles, she put the other on top of both of his clenched hands. "I know we both want things to work out between them, but maybe they're too far gone. Maybe it's just flat out too late, and we're only making things worse by interfering."

Tucker didn't answer for long enough that it was apparent he wasn't planning on it. "Are you sure you did the right thing?" Jazz tried again, and she could feel him tense.

"She would've always wondered, otherwise, in the back of her mind... wondered what could have been. I think it would've eventually eaten her alive."

The redhead attempted to smile, even though Tucker couldn't see it. That was probably a good thing, as the attempt didn't do very well. "So you decided we'd be better off wondering, instead?"

"Well, we're a bit more mentally sound, wouldn't you say?"

"Aw, no. Of course not. We both went off our rocker a long time ago; I just haven't had the heart to tell you."

At that, the pair twisted a little to look at each other, and both managed to crack a real smile for a few moments.

-S-P-A-C-E-A-N-D-T-I-M-E-G-A-P-

Once he had managed to storm dramatically—and a bit childishly, if he was being honest—out of the visibility from his sister's office, Danny drifted back down until his feet brushed the floor. Reacquainting themselves with the too-clean tile that ran throughout the hospital, they began to beat out the already-familiar path to Sam's room with hardly a second thought. Pausing briefly at the door and hoping his mood had improved since setting out, he raised his hand to knock.

A muffled "come in" was all he needed, and the weight behind the words told him that she somehow knew. He wanted to know the story there, but he resolved not to ask. Instead, he focused on opening the door and looking pleasant.

"Hey, Sam. You all right? The guys and I have been... worried." He tried to pick his words carefully, hating the fact that he had to be walking on eggshells with Sam of all people.

"Look... I'm sorry about the other day. I'm sorry about all the crap I've been putting you through. I've just... gotten a lot more messed up over the years, and I know I was a handful to begin with. You don't have to try and spare my feelings. I'm a big girl; I can take a little faux pas here and there."

Danny raised an eyebrow, testing perhaps a bit too quickly his apparent right to speak candidly. "Then what do you call our last meeting?"

"That... that was... that was me being frustrated. When it comes down to it, for all we've talked things over and for all the moments where it's felt like maybe we could somehow patch things up and be friends again... I still don't understand. I don't know why you're back because I don't know why you left. I'm still struggling to understand, and I don't want to get my hopes up if you're not back for good, and..."

"I was scared," Danny cut her off at last, his eyes boring straight into hers with an immeasurable weight behind them.

"What?"

"I was afraid. You've been wanting to know all this time why I left, and I kept telling you that I didn't know, but when it comes down to it, I was afraid. I wasn't aging, and I didn't understand it. I'd never really completely understood what was going on, since we'd tried to do it on our own, and just when I think I have things figured out, I realize that I have absolutely no clue what's going on. I was left wondering what else I had acclimatized to too much to notice; what else was slipping by under my radar. I've always been afraid that something would happen to you, and you were getting older, and half of the ghost zone knew your name. The other half still knew that you were with me, and that made you a target.

"Then my parents died, and of course they couldn't die a natural death. No, they had to die in one _stupid mundane ghost attack_ just because I couldn't stop it. They were just too old to keep up any more, and that was going to happen to you one day. To you and to Tuck and Jazz, and to everyone else I'd ever known. I was the only one who wasn't weakening; who still had the power to stop it. I couldn't let another slip-up take you away from me, Sam! The people who could once take care of themselves were aging, and they needed me. I couldn't bear to see you die, and all I could think about was that I needed to work harder so that it didn't happen again. I... I think I went a little mad for a while." His voice calmed down a little, the raging tempest of passion and anger and a tinge of insanity that had been building in it deflating suddenly and leaving behind a very empty, very sad skeleton. The point where he finally sullenly admitted what he'd always known.

"If I just left everything behind, then it would always be that way in my mind... forever. I was being selfish, and I thought that if I could know I was protecting you and latch onto the memories I had while they were still happy ones, then it would be enough. It wasn't, though. Tuck finally snapped me out of it... and I figured I owed it to everyone—you especially—to make amends." The tiniest spark of hope shone in his eyes, dimming every second that Sam remained silent, but clinging to its foothold anyways.

It was a long, painful eternity before Sam, eerily calm, said "You're not forgiven."

"What?" Danny's mind was backpedaling, attempting to figure out just how many pages he'd skipped.

"I said you're not forgiven," Sam repeated, looking up. "Danny, just what brand of bologna are you feeding me? You've faced down death time and time again; ghosts that control the universe, that can control you; ghosts that controlled Tucker and Jazz and even me. You've fought against the king of the ghosts and kicked his right hand man's butt several times. You earned yourself an arch nemesis who, to our best knowledge, has been banished to another planet since high school. You fought for the safety of a single small town, even when it thought you were the enemy, and you even beat your own _evil future self!_ And most of that was accomplished before you could drive! So you're telling me that, after all that, with years more experience under your belt, you ran away from everything you'd ever known just _because you were scared ?_ And not only that, but you never once even showed your face for twenty-four years? How can you even expect me to believe that? Even if I did, it wouldn't be worthy of forgiveness; it would be worthy of a world-class beat-down. I don't even care why you left any more; if that was the excuse you came up with to make yourself sound better, then there is no way you are forgiven! You never will be! There is nothing, ever, that could possibly make it up for this."

Her usually-pale face was red, her heart was pounding wildly, and her blood pressure spiked as she proceeded to yell. The little wireless sensor on her finger dutifully relayed the information to the suddenly-audible monitor like the nuisance that it was. Sam wanted to rip it off; knew that it would do no real damage, but resisted due to the fact that she would get an earful from Jazz about it later. She'd tried before. Besides, the meager _plunk_ it made against the wall wasn't nearly satisfying enough for her anger. She wanted to throw _Danny_ across the room. Instead, she just pointed toward the ceiling. "Out." Her teeth were gritted, and Danny got the message. He began to float, brokenly waiting for the fuming Sam to change her mind. She didn't.

Danny went intangible just as the doctors began streaming in. They made a commotion of things, and for once Sam didn't bother to try and explain. Instead, she just flopped back against her pillow mountain, attempting to relax a little and failing.

Over the commotion, Danny felt like he was about to cry and like he was too hollow to contemplate the action at the same time. "Would it have been better if I said it was because I love you?" He whispered, before taking off.


	13. Resistance

A/N: Okay, I feel like I owe you guys an apology for my last A/N... it was written late at night after a long day in which I'd gotten frustratingly little done, and what little I had near the end consisted mostly of writing heavy angst. I had a bout of temporary depression. I promise it'll never happen again, but thanks so much for the support anyways. The response I got was astonishing, especially from DBack47, who has been giving me wonderful feedback this entire time and really should have been mentioned already.

Also, as an assurance; I'm sorry if I scared anyone. I MOST CERTAINLY DO NOT plan on leaving this story hanging. I did not even mean to kid about doing so. This is one project that I have a mysterious drive to finish, and since the end is within sight I am far too stubborn to give up now (oh, and it's rather fun to write; let's not forget that). I would greatly appreciate it if you would continue to weather the rest of the journey with me. Stay a while, enjoy my insanity... maybe leave a review while you're in the neighborhood.

Hope this semi-quick update makes up for the scare I gave you guys. I wanted to get it up ASAP, so I apologize for any typos or anything. Feel free to point them out if you find them.

* * *

After the little confession, things took a more permanent dive for the worse. Sam's condition was steadily dwindling, to the point where some of the doctors were asking the hard questions like whether she'd rather live longer or live more comfortably for the time she had, and where they were virtually unafraid to prescribe new medications since they didn't have anything to fear if she gained an addiction. Danny continued to visit Jazz and Tucker every day, but despite the fact that they met at the hospital, Sam was a banned topic of speech.

Things continued on in the ghost zone in the way that they do; crazy and unpredictable and backwards yet much better than it had been once upon a time. In an attempt to distract himself and, hopefully, get a foot in on that state known as moving on that he'd had a short taste of, he started to hang out with Ember a bit, and then other ghosts by extension. The daily activities of the ghosts were strange enough to actually distract him, now that he bothered to pay attention. There were sports that were mixtures of ones he knew, ones he vaguely remembered out of some sort of history, ghostly powers, and some things that could only be labeled as a page out of Calvin and Hobbes' book. Regardless of the five-syllable title Skulker had insisted on giving one of the games, he was still convinced that it was just straight up Calvin-ball. He was also being continually surprised by how many songs Ember had actually added to her repertoire since she'd gotten over the whole one-hit wonder phase, and when all else failed, even at his age, he wasn't necessarily above a bit of mischief.

Needless to say, he was back to his previous habit of not getting much sleep.

Tucker was having less luck busying himself as Sam was winding down, attempting to cheer her up when he could and going over all kinds of paperwork that would usually be filled out by a family member of some sort. With Sam's interesting situation, he had long since become the surrogate whom all the paperwork was fielded to. In the time he had left over (which was more than one would imagine), he was returning a little bit to computer programming. Idle programming, intended only to optimize things that already worked. He had too much on his mind to worry about anything bigger.

Jazz, meanwhile, was under the most stress of all. Her husband was staying in a different ward in the same hospital, for the same reason that Sam had come all the way from her usual home in Buffalo, New York. Any hospital that Jazz worked at was bound to be a good one. Plus, the convenience factor couldn't be ignored. As it was, Calvin Pachter was regressing further. Jazz had the nervous habit of obsessive organization, and, as a result, she knew most days pretty much exactly what year her husband's memory cut off at. In a week, he had slipped back about five years, which was the fastest the Alzheimer's had managed to progress so far.

She was not particularly afraid of her husband forgetting her any time soon, as they had met in college. It was a lingering morbid curiosity, but she was truly terrified of what else was yet to come. There would be a stretch where he would only remember having the utmost disdain for her. For years, he had been dating her roommate, and the pair couldn't get along (the rivalry borne in college had disintegrated into general enmity). When the pair had run off together, it had most definitely ruined the already-shaky friendship she'd sustained with her roommate. Though, really, that had never mattered much, and that hadn't ever changed with retrospect. Given the way that the disease had been affecting him so far, however, it was quite likely that he would devolve into that same hatred a second time. It was also likely that, even if he accepted his wife's presence, he would start asking for his old flame by name. Jazz was currently attempting to assess if she could handle that, and she was seriously doubting it.

The trio all sat in Jazz's office as yet another day ticked by, all simultaneously awaiting change and hiding from it. Tea was suspiciously absent, and despite the general impression of eclectic neatness that one got upon entering the space, those who knew her well could see that her usual forms of organization were beginning to fail her. Or, more accurately, she was beginning to fail them.

"So you're sure it'd be too confusing for me to show up looking like this? I mean, I know I was never as close to the guy as you were or anything like that, but I did spend enough awkward Fenton Family Events with him to want to know how the guy's doing." Danny's protest could hardly be called that, closer to a passive conversational remark. Jazz's reply was pretty much the same, though much more distracted.

"No. Sorry, Danny, but I don't want to make this any harder for him. I think you've wheedled forgiveness out of enough of us... he can't even remember that he's mad at you, so what would the point be?"

"Yeah, I guess you're... wait, what? Even Patcher is mad at me? What did I do do him?" He stood up a little straighter, snapped out of some kind of stupor.

"What, you think anybody was happy about you leaving? He had to put up with me after it, too." Jazz was still staring at the wall, not focused very thoroughly on the conversation.

Danny sighed, dropping his head into his hands. "Great. Just great. Even my sister's boy toy hates me for leaving. He can't remember it, but he hates me."

"That's it!" Tucker shouted, standing up and marching over to Danny's chair. Determinedly, he latched onto his friend's wrist and tugged him out of the chair. "I'm sick of everyone just waiting around for something to go tragically wrong so we can all be depressed about it."

There was no way Tucker could have overpowered Danny, for a plethora of reasons, but partially out of shock and partially out of the lingering concern that all of the humans around him looked so much older than they should, he allowed himself to be pulled along like a rag doll, offering as little resistance as possible. "Where are we going?" He asked, even though he knew the answer. He wasn't sure how he felt about the new development, so he let Tucker handle their course.

"I'm tired of all of us moping around about things we can't change. It's not too late for you yet. You're going to talk to Sam." Danny suddenly dug his heels metaphorically into the ground (it wouldn't work too well in the literal sense, being that the floor was linoleum tile), his hand slipping out of Tucker's grasp.

"Whoa, whoa. Tucker, we've been over this. She _doesn't want to see me_."

With a glare, Tucker faced the irritating halfa, gears turning in his mind. "Fine, then. You won't. Just come along with me."

Turning once more, he continued down the hall towards Sam's room without so much as a pause to wait for his charge. Danny nearly let him go, until the curiosity that had dragged him back in the first place got the better of him and he jogged to catch up. "Okay, what are you talking about?"

"If you're too chicken to face her, then I'll pull out a little trick you were fond of in school. I'm going to talk to Sam, no tricks and no manipulations. You're going to float invisibly in the corner of the room and listen."

"Tuck..." Danny started, but Tuck only walked faster. "Tuck," he tried again, a bit more firmly, and placed a hand on Tucker's shoulder. The contact was light, but it got his point across. Tucker stopped and looked over his shoulder expectantly, eyebrows raised. "Why are you doing all of this?"

"Because I'm a grumpy old man. Because my wife is dead, one of my best friends is dying, and all the other one wants to do is mope. Because, after I spent years in high school trying to nudge the two of you together, after thinking that it would actually work for a while and then helping Sam make it through all of your crap, you're still dancing the _same old dance_. Because I've got no chance left of being happy but I'm trying anyways, and those of you who still have a chance to spend a few fleeting days you have with the one you love are _wasting them_. Because I'm jealous and bitter and tired of your crap, but most of all because I'm your friend and there is _no way_ I'm going to let you give up just to mope."

Danny paused for a moment to process, taken aback. Once it had all sunken in, he nodded. "All right. Lead on."

In the intermittent time, the two had lost a lot of the pleasantries of their youth. It was bare-bones and to-the-point, the speech of two men who knew each other better than themselves some days and had no time to waste. In fact, the rest of the trip was carried out in silence, only a glance shared at the door before Danny let invisibility claim him.

"I don't really care where you stay. Just keep out of the way and be quiet; can you do that?" Tucker whispered as his hand moved to the doorknob. He took the silence he received as a good sign, then proceeding to adjust his posture and open the door. "Sam?" He asked softly, watching as she set the same old book down on the side table. "You doing alright?"

Sam's first response was a sigh as she tried to shake the spacey aura that clung to her head. Even though she mustered up something of a smile, she couldn't clear it from her eyes.

"Just dying... y'know, the usual. I really wish they'd let me go out and walk more. Now that I'm _closer_ to death, they want to make my life _more_ miserable. Can you tell me the logic there?"

"Aw, they just want you to live longer, that's all. Silly doctors." Tucker's familiar superficial smile returned as he plopped down near the foot of Sam's bed.

"I know they want me to live longer, but it doesn't matter if I'm not really _living_. I'm only a few scant years from being eighty; surely that's a respectable age to live to."

"Well, you're not exactly trying too hard to keep things interesting for yourself, are you?"

Sam's brow furrowed. "What are you talking about, you crazy old coot?"

"Sam, there are three people you've been talking to regularly in the past several months. And you just kicked one of them out. If anything, you're limiting your possibilities."

Turning a little bit and covering her face with a pillow, Sam groaned. "Tuck, stop trying to fix things. It's not gonna work out, and I don't want to talk about it."

Plucking the pillow away, Tucker set the barrier on his lap. He was immediately subject to a wrinkly pout. "Oh, hush. I've given you nearly two weeks to get over yourself, and I know it's not happening. We've hardly got an eternity to wait around. So maybe you don't want to, but I think you _need_ to."

The bed's tenant gave him a firm 'I am not amused' glare. Tucker just laughed and gave her knee a pat. "So maybe I just need to hear about it. Humor me."

"Even if it-"

"It's not going to kill you." He rolled his eyes. "So what went wrong?"

"What went wrong?" Sam gave an exasperated sigh and shifted in the bed until she was ready to answer. "What went right? He left, made my life into purgatory, sent me spiraling into depression, and I decided that I didn't want to deal with the man who caused all of that in my last days."

"That's it? Sam, you two drove each other crazy every other day in freshman year. Surely you're used to it."

"Maybe that's the problem. Maybe I just got used to settling. Maybe... maybe I could've done better."

Tucker stared at Sam, contemplative. Perhaps he was a bit biased towards the pair getting back together, but... he wasn't the only one. The girl was just waist-deep in denial. "Sam, you spent more than half your life hung up on that boy."

"I almost got married." She said defensively, attempting to curl in on herself even with her stiffening joints.

Hesitating for half a second, Tucker thought that perhaps he was going too far but then realized that he didn't really care any more. Everything he had said to Danny was true; he wasn't just going to let them give up what they had for no reason. Besides, it was something she had to come to terms with if she had any hopes of dying in peace. "Sam," he said at last, his voice as comforting as he could make it, "we both know why that engagement broke off."

There was a long silence, and after it, Sam replied with a hoarse "Maybe it's time I got over him."

"Sam, you still love him."

The pause that followed wasn't quite as long as the last, but it felt even more so. "I loved him once. Look where that's gotten me."

Tucker couldn't say exactly how he knew, but he knew in that moment that Danny was gone. Sighing, he gave in. Maybe it was too far gone. Maybe she was better off dying happy than at peace. "Okay, Sam. So... you gonna be up for a walk later? It sounds like these four walls are doing a number on your head."

"It'd be better if they could at least put me in a room with a window," Sam replied, bouncing back easily despite the slight redness still hanging around her eyes, "I mean, really. What's up with that?"

-S-P-A-C-E-A-N-D-T-I-M-E-G-A-P-

Danny didn't go back after that. After being told off by Sam and then having it rubbed in his face—he didn't blame Tucker entirely, but it still stung—he didn't particularly want much to do with the hospital.

When he returned to his lair to find Tucker waiting for him about a month later—he wouldn't admit it, but he was starting to lose track of time again—he knew exactly why he was there. It was a testament to his willpower that he managed to land before he broke down.


	14. Halt

A/N: I have noticed a quirky trend lately that has made me smile. For every 101 hits this story gets, nearly on the dot, there is one review. It has continued from 28 reviews through to 30. I kinda want to keep it a pattern... 'Cuz I'm a nerd like that. XD However, it is simultaneously somewhat depressing, because this fic, as of now, has the same number of chapters as the Twilight fic I wrote ages ago, and less than half the amount of both reviews and hits. I suppose it's had more time to simmer and collect archive-seekers, but even if we only count the ones that came while I was still working on it... and the writing was so much worse. (It's still in my archives, but I don't advise you read it, especially if you're expecting my normal quality writing.)

I'm not complaining, before I start getting reassurances again (which, while lovely, are not nearly so nice as critiques); just stating observations that it's unlikely anyone here knows. I doubt anyone cares about said observations, but I had nothing better to write about for this A/N... other than that the next chapter is likely to be the last (and I can't believe it 0.o). If you have any suggestions of what you'd like to see next so far as existing works or that crossover I have the poll up about on my profile, then I'd love to hear about what you'd like to read.

Oh, and for a while, I was considering making the beginning of this a fake-out, even though I had planned to do it this way, just for giggles, but decided that it was long enough, that would be cliche and pointless, and that y'all would most definitely hate me for it... if not, I would hate myself for it. Hence... ANGST! But if you weren't here for angst, then you wouldn't be here, so we're all good.

And this is a long A/N for one that says nothing of import. Anyways, enjoy.

* * *

He just sort of showed up. Nobody knew where he had gotten the suit from, and nobody bothered to ask. In fact, nobody was really asking him anything. After Tucker weathered his breakdown, the old man not quite immune to tears himself, Danny had flown off. Nobody knew where he had gone; neither hide nor hair was seen in the waking world or the ghost zone, at least by those that would recognize him and were willing to talk. Tucker attempted to track him down, to make sure that he would have the decency to come to the funeral, and though he was unsuccessful, it was unnecessary. The halfa had his connections, and, wherever he had disappeared to, he apparently counted the event too important of a thing to miss.

Danny didn't make a move to communicate with anyone, merely standing sullenly in the corner of the small crowd that consisted more of relatives she'd never spoken with than actual friends. Jazz, however, wasn't going to let his keep-off vibes intimidate her. Leaving her spot next to Tucker, who gave the eulogy, she latched onto her brother and cried silently into his shoulder. Without a word exchanged, Danny wrapped his arm around her, his hard gaze softening the littlest bit.

She looked so old, her once-vibrant orange hair streaked through with gray, her form huddled the littlest bit with skin sagging off of it like only wrinkly old skin could. Yet so breakable; so delicate. Almost innocent in a very contradictory world-weary fashion. It wasn't the first time Danny had gotten that impression around one of the people he had once been so close to, but this time it was for a different reason. He didn't look it at all, and he wasn't actually no matter how you counted, but he felt like the older brother. Like he was protecting his frail little sister from the dangers of the world. And while it didn't nearly make everything better, it was something that was just _right_, and that made the sorrow and the complications and the guilt all a little bit easier to deal with.

He had carefully timed his entrance so that he would miss as little as possible of the eulogy, but wouldn't have to put up with the awkward greetings that would have gone beforehand. ("Hello, I'm Sam's jerk of an ex from about forty years ago. Until last month, I hadn't seen her for more than twenty years, but her death is really a crushing blow to me." Yeah, right.) As such, the only thing he really missed was the mandatory introduction of the great contributions of the Manson name and bla bla, which was hardly a loss. Since it was Tucker who had written and delivered the eulogy, that part was kept to a minimum. In all reality, it was only still there to placate the Mansons who were there out of some sort of vampiric bloodline obligation. That, and they probably thought they were getting something in the will. Man, were they in for a surprise.

After the 'background' was over, the real eulogy began. "Sam herself was a passionate person. She was stubborn as all get out, which helped her get a lot of things done that some people would never dream of. She fought ghosts in high school and still managed to pull not just passing grades, but A's and B's out of some secret hat. She had her trouble in some classes, of course, but she was only human. To her, protecting the world's future always took precedent over learning its past, an ideal that she picked up from a close friend of ours. She helped to shape him, young and clueless hero that he was, into a man who still protects us. Perhaps she taught him a little too well the traits she had in her teenaged years, but nonetheless, she was definitely an example worth following.

"She changed me... I don't know how, but in-between forcing lessons and ideals upon me, she managed to be incredibly patient. It was a surprising virtue that she tried her hardest to hide from the world. Had to have been, though, to put up with me for as long as she did. She was a better person than I'll ever be, independent and determined to make something of herself. Sure, she never managed to talk me into going green or turning vegetarian, but those were both impossible tasks. We were always foils of each other, but that was one of the reasons we stayed friends for so long. We kept each other in check.

"I've known her since kindergarten. Keep in mind that this was before her activism began; before her goth phase _and_ her emo punk phase. In Kindergarten, she didn't even yet have an aversion to being called Samantha, even if she preferred Sam. With relatively little freedom, she just wore the dresses that her parents wanted, having absolutely nothing in common with the strong-willed Sam that we all know. I mean, I'm sure she was as adorable as any other kid, but, being an average male kindergartener at the time, I never gave her a second glance. After all, dresses were the worst breeding grounds for cooties.

"It wasn't until our mutual friend... Danny—as I suppose I'll have to say his name at some point, even if it's in bad taste—moved to town in second grade that I even realized she was an individual person and not just another one of the pod people known as girls. And she would kill me if she could hear me say that. By this point, on a more redeeming note, some of her stubbornness had developed, and the dresses were traded for frilly shirts and dark wash jeans. It was a fairly mild compromise, and I came to find that even that was the product of long, daily struggles.

"Danny and I clicked instantly when we met, the video game nerds that we were, and he found something in the slightly out-of-place Sam that kept him coming back. To this day, I can't tell you what it was. Not that I couldn't write a list a mile long of all the things about her that were worth noticing, and another about the crazy things she did that left me wanting to know more about her and her crazy mind, but I can't tell you want it was in particular that drew Danny in. I don't know if he could, either."

"For a long time, I thought that Danny was the link that held the trio together. Sam and I tolerated each other, but we never agreed, and Danny was always needed as a peacemaker. We were friends, of course. Best friends; two of the inseparable trio that fought ghosts and everyday life together. But it was different; I've learned that if you take one person out of an established social order, no matter how unimportant they seem (and, you see, both Danny and Sam are very important), everything shifts around them. I thought that, if Danny went, the friendship Sam and I had would be the first to go. After all, Danny and I did guy stuff together. But He and Sam had started dating. But there was never such a strong third bond; he was there for her when she lost the most important role model in her universe, and she went to him for a shoulder to cry on, while I nearly vanished from the picture for a week. I was never the one she went to, and I was fine with that. Sam and I just didn't fit; it was Sam and Danny, or Danny and me, or all three of us as a group.

"When the other shoe finally fell and Danny slowly faded out of the picture, that's when I discovered that we didn't actually need Danny as a link. Sam and I became closer than I'd ever thought we would; maybe it was because I was the only one left to turn to, but I don't care why it happened. I'm glad that I really got to know Sam so personally and so thoroughly. It was a privilege.

"Sam spent the rest of her life battling an ongoing depression, though it didn't stop her hard work as she got a veterinary degree and then proceeded to use it. On the complete opposite end of the scientific disciplines, she also made a lot of progress in paranormal sciences on the topic of ghosts. Specifically, their creation. Her name is now alongside the Fentons on the list of pioneers to the field, a place of personal significance to her on top of the usual honor. She kept herself busy, refusing to give in to depression, even though her... strange lifestyle kept her from ever settling down and starting a family.

"In her last days, she was doing surprisingly well. The fact that her long-term medication was causing fatal effects didn't seem to phase her much; she was the same as ever. Stubborn, independent, and always itching for more freedom. As she got closer and closer to her death, however, we can only surmise that she slipped back into depression. The combination of stresses finally took their toll on her seventy-six year old body. I'm fairly sure she was proud to have made it that long. There was a time when, collectively, we felt that making it through high school alive would have been a miracle.

"Sam grew up in a Jewish family, and while she was never the most devout follower, she retained the customs to the end of her days. Seeing as I'm her friend and not a Jewish Rabbi or whatever, I can't exactly comfort you based on her religious beliefs. But I know that, wherever she is, Sam is too stubborn to be getting the short end of the stick. I've got faith in her. She was a good person, and tonight I happen to know that more than seventy-five percent of her expansive estate is going to charity. I don't think we have anything to worry about. Our Sammy wouldn't want us worrying about her when she died good and old and we all still have lives to live."

There was a long pause, filled with tears and palpable mourning; with sobs and contemplation. Something about Tucker's posture said that he was considering something, so while all indications were that he was done, everyone waited for him to continue. "That's not all I have to say, but it's probably all that you're willing to listen to. If I start spewing her secrets, I think she might rise from the grave just to punch me, and I'm in enough danger of that already. So let's lower her into the ground; time for final farewells."

With that, Tucker turned and walked away. Everyone else watched wearily as the elegant coffin was lowered into the hole in the ground, and Danny stayed for a few moments to let the situation fully sink in. After that, with a firm squeeze of Jazz and a look that said 'stay here', he waited only for a nod before he walked after Tucker.

He found the wrinkly old man leaning against one of the solemn trees in the cemetery, a tissue in hand as he shed silent tears for the loss of a lifelong friend. Unable to cry but still afraid that words would fail him, Danny just leaned up against the tree beside Tucker, staring off into the same nothing that was in the opposite direction as the proceedings.

It was Tucker who finally spoke up. "You know how famous people always seem to talk about death right before they die? There are pages and pages online, and most say something about being sick or dying, or at least the situation. I should know; I nearly spent a whole day reading them while I was writing. Her last words were 'And bring me a roll of duck tape next time. Maybe it's finally time to vandalize this silly white room.' Completely out of the blue. We were talking about death and how she was trying to decide if it would be an escape or if she should be afraid, and then we got a little off topic before I told her I had to leave... she was so close, I can't get over the irony of it. I checked with all the nurses and doctors and everything. She died in her sleep that night, and as far as we know those were the last words she ever spoke." There was a long pause as he took a shuddering breath. He wasn't sobbing, but his voice was certainly strained as he tried to get the words out.

"The part that gets me the most is that, even though I knew she was kidding, I still went out and bought a new roll of duck tape. Just because I thought she could use some cheering up. She was in a fairly good mood that last day, and I wanted to keep things that way. It just..." Words failing him, he slipped off his old beret, the threadbare security blanket he'd never been able to quite get rid of, and pulled a shiny roll of tape out from the felt. "What am I supposed to do with this now, huh?"

Danny looked at the tape, shaking in Tucker's hand, looked into his friend's shining eyes, and then finally cast a glance back over his shoulder. When his level gaze rested on Tucker again, he said his first and last words of the day. "Don't just let it go to waste; Sam never would've approved. Make yourself a new hat or something."

Tucker looked at the roll of silver in his hand, and then at the hat in the other. When he glanced back up at Danny, he was almost smiling. Peering around the tree on separate sides, the pair saw that Sam's casket was fully out of view, swallowed up by the gaping earth. Now they just had to pile the dirt on top, and most of her family was getting in their cars to head towards the law office where her will would be read.

It was a new chapter of their lives; one without Sam. No matter how short it promised to be for one member of the party, it was still going to be a challenge to adjust.

With a wordless, soggy hug goodbye, the two split ways. Tucker couldn't help but notice how, somewhere along the line, Sam had become the link in the trio where he had always assumed Danny stood. However unlikely, it explained a lot of things that he'd been trying to piece together for a while.

As he headed off to the reading to collect the likely several million dollars that he couldn't possibly deserve, he resolved to stop spending so much time with Jasmine. The resolution only lasted a few seconds before he realized what state his other friendships were in, at which point he sighed resignedly to his apparent fate of over-psychoanalyzing.


	15. The More They Stay The Same

A/N: Hello! If you're reading this note, then you're either re-reading my story (WOW, thank you _so_ much and I would _love_ to hear from you) or just now reading it for the first time. Originally, I posted two separate endings, one of which was short and obfuscating but I was driven to post because I was concerned about what others would think based off of some critique I had already recieved, and the other which I almost didn't post but where the story had _begun_ (It was literally the first thing I wrote, that ending, and I eventually decided that it made no sense to write the whole story towards it and then cut it short). I decided that was ridiculous and there was no reason to do it, especially when I hadn't wanted to in the first place. So now you have the _real_ ending. The _true_ and _right_ and _original_ ending. The canon ending, if you will. Thank you so much for coming along with me on this journey, and I hope you like my chosen ending just as much as you like the rest of the story.

* * *

It was the first time he'd slept since Tucker came with the bad news, and thankfully he didn't dream. Four days without sleep, despite not needing much and having spent them in the sort of timeless state that existed inside of Clockwork's castle, had taken their toll. He hadn't been able to rest easily, though. Not until he'd fully made his peace with the past. After watching the highlights of his idiocy in literally perfect hindsight, talking out his life—or half-life, as it very well may be—with the Master of Time, and then attending his best-friend-slash-romantic-interest-slash-ex's funeral, he had slipped into the eerily glowing psuedo-night that the ghost zone was eternally trapped in, seeking out sleep to go with his newfound peace of mind.

His lair was vaguely more comforting than Clockwork's castle, if only for the familiarity. Danny was discovering that, as he actually started to think of it as his place of living, it was developing a sort of mother hen complex. There were now a clock and calendar on the wall, side-by-side, that he hadn't really even thought of asking for. The calendar happened to mark its own days off, and he stared at the date currently marked off as he lay on the bed, eyes shifting from green to blue, and finally gave himself up to sleep. February seventeenth. The very sound of the syllables themselves seemed to carry no import, but he doubted he'd ever be able to forget that date, even once all others had long since faded from his mind.

The day where he had to start to face the world without even the possibility of Sam.

-T-I-M-E-A-N-D-S-P-A-C-E-G-A-P-

When he finally awoke, he knew that time had passed, as was inevitable. Still feeling incredibly removed from reality, which was partially a side-effect of lingering in Clockwork's castle but mostly the fog of Sam's death clinging to him still, that was all he knew. It didn't help that the ghost zone had no concept of night or day, eternally stuck in some sort of compromise with the light of day but the eerie glow of night.

He just laid there, unmoving, not even willing to look at the clock. Danny Fenton may have existed before Sam, but Danny Phantom could not have existed without her. And, if he was being honest with himself, Danny Fenton had been Sam's from the moment he met her.

The circumstances now left him stuck in a sort of limbo. Upon meeting Sam, Danny Fenton had become her friend. The friendship had continued to grow, almost past the point of best friends already when Danny Phantom entered the picture, inevitably confusing things and tying him to her further still. After the accident, he spent a good portion of his life, teenaged years up into their thirties, simultaneously protecting her and dating her. Fighting alongside her in nearly everything they did. The years that followed were a strange combination of continually protecting her but trying to give her space that left him balancing his life around her. Until, finally, he broke and his life became centered around avoiding her, around not thinking about her. And, in the very last stretch of time he had with her, it became about attempts to redeem himself with her. The past few days, he'd been running off of that leftover energy, promising to make amends; putting his past idiocy to rest along with the focus of his past.

He was going to miss her more than she could ever know, screw it if he hadn't seen her in years, and it wasn't helping that he was now lacking any overarching purpose. Sure, if there was a ghost attack, he'd go, but what was there to really do? Being a hero, thanks to the full-time heroing he'd been doing for two decades, was no longer truly a full-time job unless he wanted to make things worse. There is a point where one can take it too far. For instance, pretty much anything involving the Box Ghost is a waste of time, and if Technus attempts to show up Clockwork with time-related gadgetry, then it's really just better to let the omniscient ghost take care of himself.

Despite the promises he'd already made to himself that he would keep going, he didn't make any move to get up, just drowning in his own thoughts. Sam made appearances, briefly but frequently. The brooding wasn't good for him, he knew, and some part of him was still fighting it in vain, but the truth was that the rest of him just wasn't ready to go out into the world yet. Either world. He would've gone back to sleep if he hadn't just gotten a full day's worth. A long-belated glance at the clock told him that it had been more than just that, not that he hadn't been in need of it.

Finally, with a sigh, he reached for his inner ghost, shivering for a moment with the newfound cold before it spread throughout him and somehow managed to neutralize the lingering chill of the ghost zone. With the mask of Phantom firmly in place, he proceeded to look for a distraction. The little space he lived in didn't offer much in that department, but he attempted to 'tidy up' for a little while before he gave up on even that. Perhaps the sparse space was left a little better off for it, but it didn't do much in the way of keeping him occupied.

The ensuing pacing failed him rather quickly, at which point he resorted to the only apparent option remaining; plopping down on the couch. Keeping his thoughts in order was a lost cause. Sam was gone. The most caring, passionate person he had ever known was just gone, and somehow the universe had the nerve not to fall apart. If only he could know how it did it.

He kept trying to tell himself that it shouldn't matter, but the empty part of him—the part that had long since been missing contact, but was now just empty—wasn't listening to reason. He'd wasted the time he could have had with her, somehow telling himself that it would hurt less in the end. Why was it that he suddenly remembered spending his teen years making fun of the idiots in movies who'd done just that? Somehow, even after everything, he'd slipped back into a weird sort of routine so easily; despite all the incongruities, despite every long-ingrained instinct, he'd gotten just attached enough for it to hurt anew.

And yet, he didn't quite regret it. While he surely could've saved himself some heartache by just keeping his distance and leaving her as a woman in her fifties and younger in his memories; while he could've just imagined she'd died happy and surrounded by the cloud of admirers that she deserved instead of actually learning what had become of her, he was glad for the unlikely time he'd gotten to spend with her. It had jolted him awake again. And while maybe that meant pain, it also meant that he could get on with his life. Afterlife, half-life, whatever it was... eventually.

At the very least, she had deserved his apology. She'd deserved a lot more, actually. Even given all of his life, he probably never would've been able to make it up to her. It would seem that she was finally free of him, though. Just like she'd wanted. He couldn't help but think of how horrid he must have been in her eyes, after everything he put her through. Bad enough that Tucker had hesitated to even name him in her eulogy. The worst part was that it wasn't any less than what he really deserved.

With a sigh, attempting to stretch out the already fading, sure-to-be-momentary hopefulness, he stood. Time to go pay his penance to society. Saving the world because he had something to make up to an individual. The thought made him feel a bit like a comic book hero. One of the Bronze Aged ones, with tragic pasts and idiocy-induced depression.

Optimism fading with every step closer to the door, he eventually made it in fairly neutral spirits. Half-expecting the bleak sight of the oppressively green view to crush the rest of his spirits, he had to blink several times at the not-quite-green intrusion that he somehow hadn't noticed from inside over all of his moping. He continued to blink at the surprise guest, not nearly assured of its reality. It didn't make any sense, and despite the fact that the ghost zone rarely did, he was having a hard time reconciling the likely hallucination with anything but his depraved mind.

It would appear that a ghost of his past (forgive the unfortunate pun) was huddled on the glowing rock. Absolutely unmistakeable to his eyes despite the terrifying differences; too young and all wrong, she was just staring off into space as if he was the hallucination she was trying to avoid. The swirling green sky of the ghost zone captured her attention, and it glared back like even it knew that she didn't belong.

Hesitantly, he took a step closer, not willing to believe it was real. The universe couldn't be that cruel. Clockwork couldn't be that good at keeping secrets. A few more steps followed until he could see the pulsing energy of the far-off ghostly sky reflected in her eyes, blending into them. The empty sorrow there nearly broke his heart all over again.

Completely forgetting the open-ended task that had drawn him out of his hidey-hole, he settled down beside her, following her gaze out into the far beyond. Even though his higher thinking processes seemed to have failed him, he could still feel the instinctual dread that things were not nearly as over as they should be. After a few minutes of sitting side-by-side, in the conjunction of their separate worlds, one thought finally prevailed through the screaming silence that had overtaken his mind.

How twisted did fate have to be do give them an ending like this?

Joy and sorrow twisted into a lump in his throat as the one thought speared through the floodgates, and he was surprised that he could get any coherent words out around it. "Why'd you come back?" _I thought you hated me._

Sam was silent for a moment, steadfastly refusing to look at him. When a chuckle reverberated from her throat, it sounded just as much like a sob. "You make it so hard, you know that? I really didn't want to. I was done with you, ready to wash my hands of all the muck and mess I'd gotten caught up in, and thoroughly satisfied with hating you." There was a short pause where she wiped dripping ectoplasm away from her eyes, not caring in the least if he saw. "At first, so very long ago, I thought that maybe you'd get over it and come back. I even went looking, once or twice. But then I thought about the whole 'if you love something, let it go' crap that I'd been spouting in the first place, and I realized something else. You weren't Danny Fenton any more. It didn't matter how you felt about me, because my Danny wasn't coming back. Just like Clockwork showed us, only without all the city-destroying rage."

She let her words settle for a moment, perfectly aware that they struck a nerve. Danny wanted to protest, but he couldn't find the strength. He might have had to fight not to run back to her every day, but that didn't mean he was still her Danny. He'd done far too much growing up, even for his age, and he didn't really know how to go back any more. For years, he hadn't thought he wanted to. Now, he didn't think he could.

"More than two decades later, you come back, and I thought that I'd be able to die with my hatred of you complete. I got to take it out on you… and you let me. If you were trying to torture me, then it worked." Taking a shaky breath, she had to pause to wipe away the tears this time, starting to get a little angry at them. "I know you didn't, before you protest… not that you're going to."

Her shoulders and neck twitched, and for a second Danny thought she was actually going to look at him, but then she sighed and turned the twitch into a slow, weary shake. "But, after the first day, when you didn't come back right away, it was what I told myself. What I had to so I could go on hating you, because it was too late to do anything else. Even once you came back, for a while it was just a series of increasingly convoluted lies that I told myself so I could cope. I did give up on it eventually, but even then-until the very day that I died-I kept on believing that it wasn't enough. That it couldn't make up for what you'd put me through, even if you hadn't dragged everyone else along for the ride. Actually, I'm pretty sure that I still don't forgive you."

Finally, several eternities too late, her puffy eyes, newly green, looked up to him. "And you know what?" She asked, biting her lip to keep a sob in.

Knowing that she was asking because she needed to hear his voice in the same way he'd needed to see her eyes, and not because she actually expected him to guess, he drew up the last of his strength from who-knows-where and forced his mouth to form words. Just two; all he could manage and all she really needed yet. "What, Sam?"

The next sob was slightly hysterical and just the tiniest, littlest bit satisfied, but she forced her eyes to stay steady on him as she spoke. "Even when I hated you, I still couldn't say no."

When the continuation was slow-coming, Danny tried to wrap his mouth around another question, but Sam eventually shook her head and looked away, dazed and far-off. "When the time came to choose… when I stood before the two doors, I looked between them and realized that I just couldn't pick the one I wanted to. I knew how; I'd been spending _years_ of my life studying and interviewing and theorizing about the choices that lead to the creation of ghosts. I was conscious of the situation, which is better than the state most people are in, and they still manage to make it where they want to be. But I couldn't. As cliché as it sounds, in my last days, I only had the strength left to hate you because love and hate are two sides of the same coin."

Carefully, Danny reached for the hand that he hadn't held for so long. Trying not to jump at the thrill of having it in his again, no matter the differences, he brought it slowly up to his lips and placed a gentle kiss against her knuckles. "It's okay, Sam… I'm pretty sure I hate both of us right now."

Helpless and no longer able to speak, Sam just looked up at the halfa with pleading eyes.

Places swapped, Danny screwed his eyes shut and turned away, squeezing her hand just a little bit tighter. "This isn't what I wanted for you. It was just some selfish longing I never let myself think… and you went along with it."

Neither could say anything for a long time, attempting to fully wrap their minds around the strange, impossible situation. Only in their lives could something so convoluted ever happen. "Do you want me to leave?"

"No," Danny assured her immediately, rubbing his thumb across the back of her hand to remind her of the contact, "no, I don't want you to go... I still love you, Sam, after all this time. I know you find it hard to believe, but I never stopped. I just... My hero complex just got in the way."

The pleading, questioning eyes returned anew, and Danny sighed, running his free hand through his hair in the nervous gesture that had never quite faded. "You don't know how hard it was for me to cope with a threat that I couldn't fight. Old age was going to claim you... and I wanted to save you so bad, but there wasn't anything I could do. It would've been easier if I could relate to the slow, ongoing kind of mortality. I can't imagine what it must be like for your body to betray you like that... all I could save you from were the ghosts, so... I threw myself into that. It was partly a distraction, but with every ghost threat I headed off in the ghost zone, it was one more that wouldn't ever harm you."

"Danny," Sam said softly, infusing volumes into the one word. The way it dangled in the air, open-ended, drew his attention enough to turn his head. "You need to stop being so pathetic. You're making me want to punch you and kiss you at the same time." The pair shared something almost like a smile for a minute, before Sam asked the real question. "Why didn't you tell me that last time I asked?"

"I did," Danny replied firmly, if a bit offhandedly, "Just not in so many words."

"...I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I don't deserve your forgiveness, much less your apologies."

After a brief moment, Sam smiled a little and poked her head farther into Danny's line of vision. "Fine. Here's a deal for you; I'll take back my apology if you'll take the forgiveness. I don't have much use for it."

Against his own will, the ghost's eyes brightened a little. The smile was just barely kept off of his face. "You sure, Sam? I took your life away and, in the end, even your death. After all the fighting I had to do for you to accept that I wasn't going to leave, you're just going to forgive me now?"

Sam shifted back a little, leaning her weight on one arm that was angled behind her. "Not much else I can do about it, is there?" The statement, a fine example of the dichotomy of the mood, hung on the air for a while before she shook her head a little and continued. "Maybe it's for the best. We've finally got our second chance, it would seem."

Danny squeezed her hand again and leaned back himself. For a while, the pair just stared out into the swirling ghostly sky above, thinking. They should probably be worried about Sam developing a ghostly obsession, or about what would happen if there was ever a falling-out, or what kind of future they had in store, but both were a bit too busy savoring the moment. Moments were such a fleeting thing.

"I love you too, by the way. In case that wasn't clear."

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33,099 words, 37 reviews; 3,741 hits, 19 favs, and 20 alerts. Thanks for making this such a great debut into the world of DP. Hopefully I'll see you again soon.


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